Parker v. White

• Decision Date: 29 April 1953
• Docket Number: No. 455,455
• Citation: 75 S.E.2d 615,237 N.C. 607
• Parties: PARKER, v. WHITE et al.
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

Page 615

75 S.E.2d 615

237 N.C. 607

PARKER, v. WHITE et al.

No. 455

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

April 29, 1953

Smith, Leach, Anderson & Dorsett, Raleigh, for defendants-appellants.

Simms & Simms, Raleigh, for plaintiff-appellee.

BARNHILL, Justice.

The complaint must contain 'A plain and concise statement of the facts constituting a cause of action, without unnecessary repetition * * *.' G.S. § 1-122(2); Guy v. Baer, 234 N.C. 276, 67 S.E. 2d 47. It must likewise contain a demand for the relief to which the plaintiff supposes himself entitled. G.S. § 1-122(3). If the plaintiff seeks to recover in one action on two or more causes of action, each cause must be separately stated. Rule 20(2), Rules of Practice in the Supreme Court, 221 N.C. 557; King v. Coley, 229 N.C. 258, 49 S.E.2d 648.

The function of a complaint is not the narration of the evidence but the statement of the substantive and constituent facts upon which the plaintiff's claim to relief is founded. Guy v. Baer, supra. Only the facts to which the pertinent legal or equitable principles of law are to be applied should be stated. Spain v. Brown, 236 N.C. 355, 72 S.E.2d 918. 'The facts should be so stated as to leave the defendant in no doubt as to the alleged cause of action against him, so that he may know how to answer and what defense to make.' Hussey v. Norfolk S. R. Co., 98 N.C, 34, 3 S.E. 923, 925; Taylor v. Seaboard Air Line R Co., 145 N.C. 400, 59 S.E. 129; King v. Coley, supra.

'Observance of these rules in drafting a complaint is essential to good pleading and a well prepared complaint is most helpful both to the court and the jury. However, they are all too often honored in the breach' Guy v. Baer, supra [234 N.C. 276, 67 S.E.2d 49]. Such is the case here.

For us to attempt to summarize the multitudinous allegations in the complaint would serve only to render this opinion unnecessarily long. It consumes eighteen pages of the mimeographed record and consists of allegations, mostly evidentiary in nature, concerning acts and transactions extending from 1933 to some time in 1951 without any attempt to state separately more than one cause of action, if indeed plaintiff so intended.

Suffice it to say that it contains allegations that plaintiff's father purchased a certain tract of land and plaintiff thereafter purchased the same from his father about 1933. This is followed by (1) a detailed account of plaintiff's efforts and expenditures over a period of approximately seventeen years to improve and develop said land for sale in lots and his ambitious plans for such development; (2) a detailed account of negotiations between plaintiff and defendant White for the sale of twenty acres of said land to White and various and sundry promissory representations made by White during such negotiations; (3) allegation of the sale to White of the said twenty acres in reliance on such promissory representations; (4) allegations of plaintiff's extended efforts to get information respecting White's plans for developing the property purchased by him and numerous promises and representations made by White in respect thereto; (5) appointment of plaintiff as representative of the U.S. Government as a part of the 'Good Neighbor' policy; his extended trip to El Salvador, and his fruitless efforts while there to get information from defendants; (6) allegations as to the organization of the corporate defendant as a stooge or dummy corporation owned and dominated by White through which White effected nefarious breaches of promissory representations made to plaintiff; (7) allegations of various and sundry actions of defendants in development of the land purchased by White in violation of the promissory representations made prior to the execution of the deed to him; (8) allegations that the water main installed by plaintiff was damaged or destroyed, the location of the streets across the land sold was changed, and a lake on plaintiff's land was contaminated.

We have read and reread this complaint in a fruitless offort to discover just what legal right plaintiff seeks to assert or what wrong he seeks to redress. In an amendment to the original complaint he alleges that the reservation of certain easements agreed upon in the preliminary negotiations was omitted from the deed from plaintiff to White by mutual...