Mitchell v. Brown

• Decision Date: 28 February 1883
• Citation: 88 N.C. 156
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: MOSES MITCHELL v. ANDERSON BROWN.

88 N.C. 156

MOSES MITCHELL

v.ANDERSON BROWN.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

February Term, 1883.

EJECTMENT tried at Spring Term, 1882, of IREDELL Superior Court, before Eure, J.

The plaintiff appealed.

Messrs. Reade, Busbee & Busbee, for plaintiff .

Mr. D. M. Furches, for defendant .

SMITH, C. J.

The complaint alleges the plaintiff to be owner and entitled to the possession of three contiguous tracts of land, each of which is particularly defined and described, containing in the whole one hundred and nineteen acres, and unlawfully withheld by the defendant, and asserts his right to recover the same with compensation for detention and waste committed.

The answer admits the defendant to be in possession of a part only of the land embraced in the plaintiff's boundaries, and, denying his title thereto, avers the same to belong to his father, Henry Brown, who let him into possession, and under whom he holds as tenant.

The plaintiff put in a replication in denial of the allegations in the answer, and declaring that the statements contained in the second clause thereof, except as to the tenancy, are false, “and that every other part of the defendant's answer is corruptly false.”

We reproduce this language imputing, in direct terms, the commission of perjury by the defendant, to mark our emphatic condemnation of its use in a pleading which ought to contain simple allegations or denials expressed in decorous terms and not be employed to give utterance to personal ill-will, or to make slanderous imputations. If this be tolerated, as crimination invites and provokes recrimination, the record may become the vehicle of personal abuse instead of being, as it is intended to be, a plain narrative of judicial action in a cause. The replication ought not to have been received with this offensive language, or, when discovered, should have been removed from the files until reformed and made consistent with the rules of pleading as prescribed in the Code; nor, we may add, do such accusations add to the force of a plain and simple statement of fact.

The defendant, at fall term, 1881, obtained leave to amend his answer, and made the amendment to the succeeding term, when the cause was tried. The amendment in substance alleges the prosecution of a former action by the defendant's lessor against the present plaintiff, in which, upon the pleadings, the title to the land now in suit was claimed by him and put in issue, and the finding upon the issue was...