Fulton Ice & Coal Co v. Pece

• Decision Date: 13 December 1923
• Docket Number: (No. 3657.)
• Citation: 120 S.E. 636,157 Ga. 105
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court
• Parties: FULTON ICE & COAL CO. v. PECE et al.

157 Ga. 105

120 S.E. 636

FULTON ICE & COAL CO.

v.PECE et al.

(No. 3657.)

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Dec. 13, 1923.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Certiorari from Court of Appeals.

Action by Gordon Pece against the Fulton Ice & Coal Company and another. Judgment overruling demurrers in part was reversed on error by the Court of Appeals (29 Ga. App. 507, 116 S. E. 57), and defendant named brings certiorari. Affirmed.

Anderson, Rountrea & Crenshaw, of Atlanta, for plaintiff in error.

Hewlett & Dennis, Leonard Haas, and Bryan & Middlebrooks, all of Atlanta, for defendants in error.

BECK, P. J. [1, 2] The petition for certiorari in this case contains exceptions to the holding of the Court of Appeals that the petition, except in the count which was held to be defective, set forth a cause of action against the plaintiff in certiorari, Fulton Ice & Coal Company. The applicant for certiorari criticises the holding in general terms, upon the ground that the effect of the decision is to lay down the broad doctrine that—

"The owner of a manufacturing plant is an absolute insurer of the safety of one lawfully on his premises, as against latent dangers which a reasonable inspection would have disclosed, although such owner was wholly without knowledge or notice of such defect, and although nothing had happened, and there was no fact or circumstance or report or other thing from which notice might be implied, or which would put a man of even extraordinary prudence upon inquiry, and although such person was injured by an explosion of the very appliance he was employed to repair."

We are of the opinion that the Court of Appeals properly ruled that the petition stated a cause of action, and that it does not by its ruling or anything said in the opinion go to the extent of stating the doctrine which, in the criticism quoted, is ascribed to the opin ion. A careful study of the opinion affords no grounds from which deductions could be made that are so broad and radical as are implied in the language of the criticism. No special part of the language in the decision is separated from the general holding and challenged upon the ground that it is too broad, inexact, or erroneous. The attack upon it is general. We agree with the Court of Appeals that the decision in the case of Dartmouth Spinning Co. v. Achord, 84 Ga. 14, 10 S. E. 449, 6 L. R. A. 190, is not controlling in this case; for it appears from the statement of facts in that case that the machinery, defective in part, was put up...