Richards & Associates, Inc. v. Studstill
| Decision Date | 09 April 1956 |
| Docket Number | No. 19223,19223 |
| Citation | 93 S.E.2d 3,212 Ga. 375 |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
| Parties | RICHARDS & ASSOCIATES, Incorporated, v. Pennin M. STUDSTILL et al. |
Syllabus by the Court.
1. There is no merit in the motion to dismiss the writ of certiorari on the ground that it was improvidently granted.
2. Joint tort-feasors residing in different counties of this State may be sued together in the County of either; but in order to maintain such a suit, it is necessary for the plaintiff to allege and prove that the defendants are in fact joint tortfeasors.
3. A pleading is alternative when it alleges substantive facts so disjunctively that it cannot be determined upon which of them the pleader intends to rely as a basis for recovery. And when a plaintiff's case is pleaded in the alternative, one version of which is good and the other not, his petition will, on demurrer thereto, be treated as pleading no more than the latter, because it must be construed most strongly against the pleader. Applying this rule, the petition in the instant case failed to state a cause of action against the resident defendant, and the nonresident defendant's general demurrer should have bee sustained.
Nelson & Nelson, Carl K. Nelson, Dublin, for plaintiff in error.
Martin, Snow & Grant, Cubbedge Snow, Macon, Will Ed Smith, Eastman, for defendant in error.
Mrs. Studstill instituted a suit for damages in the Superior Court of Dodge County against Mrs. Sybil Liggin and Richards & Associates, Inc. Briefly, her one count petition alleges: The defendant Mrs. Liggin resides in Dodge County, and the defendant Richards & Associates, Inc., has its principal office and place of business in Carroll County, Georgia. The plaintiff, while riding as a guest passenger in the defendant Mrs. Liggin's automobile, was injured when it collided with another automobile at the intersection of Church Street and Academy Avenue in the City of Dublin, Georgia. Church Street Runs north and south and is intersected by Academy Avenue, which runs east and west, the latter being a boulevard or through street. At the time of the collision, the defendant Mrs. Liggin was driving her automobile south on Church Street at a speed of 35 miles per hour in an area of the city where the speed limit is fixed by ordinance at 15 miles per hour. She was not looking ahead but to the side and toward a passenger in her automobile, with whom she was talking. She negligently failed to notice the heavy traffic on Academy Avenue. She did not stop or reduce her speed at the intersection of the streets, and collided with an automobile being driven west on Academy Avenue by Roy Taylor. In consequence of the collision, the plaintiff sustained specified permanent injuries. Shortly before the plaintiff was injured, the defendant Richards & Associates, Inc., while laying a gaspipe line along Church Street, took down a street sign at the intersection of the aforementioned streets, which notified those traveling on Church Street to stop at the intersection, and in replacing it negligently reversed the 'stop' signal so as to indicate that Church Street, and not Academy Avenue, was the through street. Following this, the petition alleges: Had the defendant Richards & Associates, Inc., replaced the stop sign in its original position, the defendant Mrs. Liggin would have seen the stop signal from 105 to 200 feet from the intersection of the streets, and would have had her automobile under control, and would have stopped it before entering the intersection. The petition was not demurred to by the defendant Mrs. Liggin, but the defendant Richards & Associates, Inc., demurred to it on the ground that it failed to state a cause of action for the relief sought. The demurrer was overruled and the demurrant sued out a writ of error to the Court of Appeals. The judgment thus complained of was affirmed. Richards & Associates, Inc. v. Studstill, 92 Ga.App. 853, 90 S.E.2d 56. The case came to this court on certiorari to the Court of Appeals.
1. The defendant in certiorari has made a motion to dismiss the writ, on the grounds that the petition therefor contains no sufficient assignment of error and presents no question of public gravity and importance. The motion is not meritorious. In the petition to this court for the writ, error on the judgment complained of is properly assigned, and the ruling made by the Court of Appeals is in irreconcilable conflict with prior unanimous rulings by that court and by this court. Hence the writ was not improvidently granted and the motion to dismiss it is denied. See Frazier v. Southern Ry. Co., 200 Ga. 590, 592, 37 S.E.2d 774.
2. By our Constitution of 1945, joint tortfeasors residing in different counties of this State may be sued together in the county of either. Code...
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