Waters-Pierce Oil Co. v. Van Elderen

• Decision Date: 02 December 1907
• Citation: 106 S.W. 947
• Parties: WATERS-PIERCE OIL CO. v. VAN ELDEREN et al.
• Court: Arkansas Supreme Court

106 S.W. 947

WATERS-PIERCE OIL CO. v. VAN ELDEREN et al.

Supreme Court of Arkansas.

December 2, 1907.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Garland County; Alexander M. Duffie, Judge.

Separate actions by Johan Van Elderen and others against the Waters-Pierce Oil Company. From separate judgments for each plaintiff, defendant appeals. Reversed and dismissed.

Mehaffy & Armstead and Rose, Hemingway, Cantrell & Loughborough (J. D. Johnson, of counsel), for appellant. Wood & Henderson and R. G. Davies, for appellees.

FLETCHER, Special Judge.

This case embraces a number of causes of action on behalf of different parties arising out of an explosion at the Turf Exchange in the city of Hot Springs on the 24th day of December, 1902. The various parties plaintiff brought separate actions against the oil company, and these actions were by the court, and against the objection of the oil company, consolidated as authorized by the act of the Legislature approved May 11, 1905, and were tried before a jury upon the same evidence. Separate verdicts were rendered and separate judgments were entered against the oil company in favor of each plaintiff. One motion for new trial and one bill of exceptions were filed in the cases as consolidated, in which each plaintiff was named as a plaintiff against the oil company. A separate appeal was taken to this court from each judgment.

The appellees have filed in this court a motion to dismiss the appeals or affirm the judgments, on the ground that the appeals were not properly taken, and separate motions for new trial and separate bills of exceptions were not filed as to each of the plaintiffs. The express purpose of the statute was to authorize the court to "make such orders and rules concerning the proceedings therein as may be conformable to the usages of courts for avoiding unnecessary costs or delay in the administration of justice." St. 1905, pp. 798, 799; Acts 1905, pp. 798, 799. No possible good could have been accomplished either to the plaintiffs or other parties to the suit by filing separate motions for new trial or separate bills of exception. On the contrary, the record would have been unnecessarily incumbered, and the appellant put to unnecessary cost and delay.

Counsel for appellees rely upon the case of Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v. Summers, 125 Fed. 719, 60 C. C. A. 487, where it was held under an act of Congress the same as this that: "When two separate actions depending on the same facts were consolidated and...