Wright v. Saddler
| Decision Date | 01 February 1951 |
| Docket Number | 8 Div. 578 |
| Parties | WRIGHT v. SADDLER. |
| Court | Alabama Supreme Court |
Bradshaw & Barnett and Elbert B. Haltom, all of Florence, for appellant.
Mitchell & Poellnitz, of Florence, for appellee.
Appeal from a decree overruling demurrer to a bill for equitable accounting. We hold the bill good against the demurrer.
The argument that the bill lacked equity seems to be rested on a strict construction of the allegations of the bill alone, without taking into consideration the exhibits. The rule is, however, that in determining the sufficiency of the allegations, the recitations in the exhibits to a bill are read into and made a part of the bill, Autauga Co-op Leasing Ass'n v. Ward, 250 Ala. 229, 33 So.2d 904; and when the averments of the bill are contradictory to the exhibits, the recitals in the exhibits take precedence and control. Moody v. Headrick, 250 Ala. 590, 35 So.2d 489; McGowin v. Cobb, 249 Ala. 561, 32 So.2d 36.
Under this rule of interpretation the bill, with exhibits, substantially shows: The complainant was engaged in farming enterprises during the year 1949 and in the fall of the year delivered to appellant (defendant), who operated a cotton gin and store, his cotton to be ginned. In December, when the complainant demanded his cotton, offering to pay the ginning charges and any other account he might owe, the defendant refused to deliver the cotton, claiming he was holding same for an account due him by complainant and complainant's father for goods and monies furnished them during that year. In March, 1950, defendant wrote complainant and his father a joint letter confirming this fact, advising them that he had sold the cotton and applied the greater portion of the proceeds to the payment of what he claimed to be their debt to him, and tendered a small balance as the difference between the two accounts. This letter is Exhibit A to the bill. Thereupon the complainant demanded an accounting from the defendant and the defendant submitted a statement, made Exhibit B to the bill, of a joint account against complainant and his father. Thus from the bill and exhibits it appears the defendant was claiming the cotton to be owned jointly by the complainant and his father and that the account he claimed to be due him was likewise owed jointly by father and son.
The bill makes a case for equitable accounting to settle mutual accounts under the rule of our cases. Doss v. Williams, 249 Ala. 565, 567, 32 So.2d 221, 222; Farr v. Southern Supply Co., 253 Ala. 281, 44 So.2d 247. These cases affirm the general principle that: Mutuality (warranting accounting in equity) is where each of the parties has an account against the other, as where each party has given credit to the other on the faith of indebtedness to him, or each party has a demand or right of action against the other. Such is the fair interpretation of the allegations of the bill, in connection with the exhibits.
We deem it unnecessary to enter into a discussion of the refinements of the principle, as discussed in 1 C.J.S., Accounting, 652, and as noticed in appellant's brief, relative to disconnected, opposing demands of a different nature, remote from each other in point of time, as not creating mutual accounts, since that status does not prevail here. The business alleged to have existed between the parties appears to have been sufficiently connected and interrelated as to come within the approved rule and to give the bill equity. Here the complainant admits he owes the defendant an account for monies and goods furnished him for the crop year by the defendant, and defendant admits the complainant has an account against the defendant for the amount of his converted cotton, less the ginning charges, etc., but the defendant claims the cotton to be owned both by the complainant and complainant's father, which defendant is presumably holding under the furnishing account which he also claims to be due jointly by the complainant and his father, though the account he submitted to them did not separate the items to indicate the amount of indebtedness he claimed against the complainant and the amount he claimed to be owing by complainant's father.
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