Clark v. Chi., Milwaukee & St. Paul Ry. Co.

• Decision Date: 03 June 1881
• Citation: 28 Minn. 69,9 N.W. 75
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court
• Parties: CLARK v THE CHICAGO, MILWAUKEE & ST. PAUL RY. CO. AND ANOTHER.

28 Minn. 69

9 N.W. 75

CLARKvTHE CHICAGO, MILWAUKEE & ST. PAUL RY. CO. AND ANOTHER.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

Filed June 3, 1881.

Appeal from order of district court, county of Freeborn.

Lovely & Morgan, for appellant.

Cameron, Losey & Buns, for respondents.

MITCHELL, J.

This is an appeal from an order sustaining a demurrer to the complaint. The ground of demurrer was that the complaint did not state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action. The here material allegations of the complaint are as follows: “That on the sixth of September, 1880, the servant of the plaintiff was lawfully traveling in a wagon drawn by two horses, all the property of the plaintiff, along the public highway in the town of Carlston, in the county of Freeborn, which public highway crosses the railroad operated by said defendants near the section line between sections 29 and 32 in said township; that as said servant of this plaintiff reached said crossing the defendants herein, by the culpable carelessness, negligence, unskilfulness, and mismanagement of said defendants and their employes, wrongfully run a locomotive, with a train of cars thereto attached, used and employed by defendants in operating said railroad, against plaintiff's said horses, and threw them down, killing one of them immediately, and so severely injuring the other as to render him practically worthless.”

It is urged that it is not sufficient to allege that an act was done negligently or carelessly; that this is merely a conclusion of law, and not a statement of an issuable fact; that the physical facts constituting the negligence must be alleged. It is, of course, an elementary rule of pleading that facts, and not mere conclusions of law, are to be pleaded. But this rule does not limit the pleader to the statement of pure matters of fact unmixed with any matter of law. When a pleader alleges title to or ownership of property, or the execution of a deed in the usual form, these are not statements of pure fact. They are all conclusions from certain probative or evidential facts not stated. They are in part conclusions of law and in part statements of facts, or rather the ultimate facts drawn from these probative or evidential facts not stated; yet these forms are universally held to be good pleading. Some latitude must therefore be given to the term “facts,” when used in a rule of pleading. It must of necessity include many allegations which are mixed conclusions of law and statements of fact, otherwise pleadings would become intolerably prolix, and mere statements of the evidence. Hence, it has become a rule of pleading that while it is not allowable to allege a mere conclusion of law containing no element of fact, yet it is proper, not only to plead the ultimate fact inferable from certain other facts, but also to plead anything which, according to the common and...