Case ID: ala_203/html/0202-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "SOMERVILLE, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

(82 South. 452)
    GRAVES v. CRUSE-CRAWFORD MFG. CO.
    (6 Div. 834.)
    Supreme Court of Alabama.
    June 19, 1919.
    1. Evidence <&wkey;208(2) — Pleadings in Other Cases Not Brought to Personal Notice of Party — Competency.
    Pleadings in other cases 'which are signed and filed by counsel without apparently being brought to the personal notice of the party ara not evidence against him, except as to statements shown to have been inserted by his direction.
    2. Evidence <&wkey;208(2) — Admissions — Complaint by Plaintiff in Another Action.
    In an action for permanent personal injuries, a complaint in another case in which plaintiff sought damages for his mere expulsion from a street car is irrelevant as evidence against him.
    Appeal from Circuit Court, Jefferson County; John C. Pugh, Judge.
    Action by Richard Graves against the Cruse-Crawford Manufacturing Company, for damages for personal injuries. Judgment for defendant, and plaintiff appeals.
    Reversed and remanded.
    Plaintiff sues for injuries received while walking along a public alley in tire city of Birmingham as the result of falling over a pile of iron placed there by the defendant. The complaint claims as upon simple negligence and wanton or willful injury, and charges that “plaintiff’s right leg was severely and seriously wrenched and bruised and his right ankle was fractured and sprained, * * * permanently injuring plaintiff and permanently rendering him less able to earn a livelihood.” The defense was the general issue and several pleas of contributory negligence. On cross-examination the defendant was permitted, over plaintiff’s objection, to ask the defendant when he sued J. C. Long; when he sued Catanzano Bros.; and when he sued the Birmingham Railway, Light & Power Company. In permitting these questions and the answers thereto the trial judge stated that they were admitted subject to being connected up by showing that these were suits for the same injury now sued for. Later on defendant was permitted over plaintiff’s objection to read in evidence the complaint filed by the plaintiff In a suit against Catanzano Bros, in November, 1914, claiming damages for being knocked down by defendant’s motorcar and injured as to his hips, back, stomach, and other organs, and alleging that he was thereby permanently injured; also to -read in evidence the complaint filed by this company in a suit against J. C. Long in 1913, alleging that he was lacerated, torn, bruised, and otherwise injured by a wire negligently left near the sidewalk by the defendant, and claimed that he was thereby permanently injured. The trial court stated that these complaints were admitted in the evidence to show the .physical condition of plaintiff, and were pertinent only as to the measures of damages in this case.
    Denson & Ivey, of Birmingham, for appellant.
    Whitaker & Nesbit, of Birmingham, for appellee.
   SOMERVILLE, J.

We think the trial court erred in allowing defendant to show that plaintiff had previously and severally sued three other parties for alleged personal injuries, and in allowing the complaints in two of those cases to be read to the jury.

1. Pleadings in other cases, which are signed and filed by counsel, without apparently being brought to the personal notice of the party, are not evidence against him. They may be used as admissions of the facts recited therein, “if the pleadings are shown’ to have been drawn by the express direction of the party in whose behalf they are filed, and.any statements of fact therein contained to have been inserted by his direction or with his assent.” 1 Greenl. on Ev. (16th Ed.) p. 313; State v. Atlantic Coast Line R. R. Co., 202 Ala. 558, 81 South. 60.

It is obvious that the complaints in question are the work of counsel, and run in the familiar formulas of damage suit nomenclature. Their well-worn phrases are found in practically all complaints for personal injuries,, and the allegation of permanent injury is added by counsel as a matter of course, de bene esse. There is nothing in the evidence to fasten the allegations of these complaints upon the plaintiff as his personal admissions of facts.

2. But, in any case, the injuries recited in those complaints have no bearing upon the specific and limited injury for which this suit is brought. If plaintiff had been injured as there claimed, it could have had no logical tendency to lessen the injury here shown, or to mitigate its consequences.

3. No complaint was read showing what plaintiff claimed in the suit against the street railway company, and it does not appear that he was injured at all, except by his mere expulsion from a car for want of a ticket. The fact and circumstances of such a suit were utterly irrelevant to the issues of this case, and should have been excluded.

That the introduction of these matters in evidence was seriously prejudicial to plaintiff cannot be doubted, and their erroneous admission must work a reversal of the judgment.

We think' the demurrers to the several pleas of contributory negligence were properly overruled.

Other assignments of error need not he noticed.

Reversed and remanded.

ANDERSON, O. J., and MAYFIELD and THOMAS, JJ., concur.