I wrote a previous post about this - http://www.laborlawtalk.com/showthread.php?p=810946#post810946 - but to recap, during the period of January-April 2004, my employer overpaid me. In January 2005, they wrote to me asking me to repay the amount I was overpaid. I sent them a check within a month or so, which they never cashed. in April 2006, I stopped payment on the check because it still hadn't been cashed. In September 2006, they wrote to me again acknowledging that my check had been received but not cashed, and asking me to repay the amount of money again.

I wrote back and said that I believed that the statute of limitations on this debt (2 years on an oral contract in CA) had expired, and so I was not obligated to repay at this point. (It seems to me that I did not reaffirm the debt by sending them the check in early 2005, since this was *before* the statute of limitations expired -- is that correct?) Their response was that because I was paid under a federal research grant, there is no statute of limitations. Is this true?

If that is true, if they were to sue me, what would happen? I'm currently living in the United Kingdom -- would that prevent them from suing me? If they didn't get around to suing me until next year, when I'll be living in New York (not California), would my being out of state also stop them from being able to sue me? It seems to me that besides the large amount of time that has passed before their taking any action, their failure to cash the check that I sent them within a year (and the fact that they waited 18 months in between originally asking me for the check, and any further communication) would suggest that they would be unlikely to be successful in suing me for this debt. Is my intuition reasonable here? Also, is it best for me to reply to their latest email again and say that I don't intend to repay the debt because the statute of limitations has expired, or to ignore it for now?