What most litigants do not know about legal actions and enforcing their rights is that you are expected to run to court immediately because there is a time limit as to when you are expected to institute an action in court to enforce your right once you are aggrieved because if you sleep on your right and the time within which you are expected to commence the action elapses you are prohibited or barred from bringing up that action in court any longer. This is called statute barred.
Statute barred as a legal principle is used to describe a legal action that cannot be brought to court because too much time has passed. This is raised as an objection for a court to strike off a matter on the ground that the time the aggrieved person was statutorily expected to commence that action has elapsed and the court is bound to dismiss the claim on the ground that it is statute-barred. It is usually as to time i.e. the bar gives a time limit during which certain actions or steps should be taken, and one is barred from taking action after the period specified in the statute. Any action taken after or outside the specified limit or period is of no avail and has no valid legal effect.
When your right has been trampled upon and you want the court to address that for you, you better run to court on time if not you will lose the right to go to court because the time has elapsed. This supports the (Latin) legal maxim “Vigilantibus Non Dormientibus Jura Subveniunt” which literally means when translated to English “that the law assists only those who are vigilant, and not those who sleep over their rights”.
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This defense or objection of statute barred is regularly raised on land matters; ie if someone is encroaching on your land or wants to snatch your land from you, there’s a time limit you are expected to take the matter to court if not it will be deemed that you have slept on your rights and you will henceforth be prohibited from coming to court over that matter any longer. Employment/labour disputes also have time limitations as to when you as an aggrieved employee are expected to go to court to commence an action if you are being aggrieved by your employer. If that time elapses and you didn’t act, you will be prohibited from further taking any legal action on that matter subsequently.
You should note that this legal principle of statute barred is restricted to civil suits or actions alone; as for criminal actions, there is no time limit or time restriction as to when it should be brought up or instituted in court. A crime that took place 100 years ago can be instituted in court today and there won’t be any defense or objection as to the time limit to have elapsed. This is to say that criminal actions are exemptions to the defense of statute barred. This is why rape cases or robbery cases or other criminal cases that took place a long time ago can successfully be instituted and prosecuted in court at any time and the defendant can not raise the objection of effluxion of time.