Case ID: ga_41/html/0410-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "WARNER, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

PHILLIP CAUSEY, plaintiff in error, v. JAMES M. COOPER, defendant in error.
    (Atlanta,
    June Term, 1870.)
    PLEADING—EFFECT OF GENERAL ISSUE—ISSUABLE DEFENSE WHEN UNDER 'OATH.—The legal effect of a plea of the general issue by the defendant, is an absolute and general denial of what is alleged in the plaintiff’s declaration, whereby the fact of indebtedness is affirmed on one side, and denied on the other, which denial of indebtedness to the plaintiff is an issuable defense; and if sworn to by the defendant, entitles him to go before a jury for the trial of that issue.
    Pleading. Before Judge Harrell. Randolph Superior Court. May Term, 1870;
    Cooper sued Causey upon an open account. Causey pleaded that “he did not undertake and promise in manner and form as the said plaintiff has above thereof complained against him, and - of this he puts himself upon the country.” This plea was sworn to according to the form required by law. Cooper’s counsel moved to strike the plea, because it was not an issuable plea. The Court struck it and entered judgment against Causey for the amount sued for. This is assigned as errof.
    B. S. Worrill, for plaintiff in error.
    H. Fielder, for defendant.
    
      
      GENERAL ISSUE—ISSUABLE DEFENSE WHEN UNDER OATH.—“When a defendant files a plea of the general issue under oath, it is such an issuable defense as entitles him to go to the jury, and it is error for the court to strike such a plea and award a judgment by the court without the intervention of a jury. Causey v. Cooper, 41 Ga. 409.” Dunn v. Welsh, 62 Ga. 243.
      The plea of the general issue, being made on oath, is such an issuable defense as carries the case to the jury, and the same should not be stricken with other insufficient pleas so as to enable the court to render a judgment without a jury. Woolfolk v. Beach, 61 Ga. 67, citing the principal case.
    
   WARNER, J.

The error assigned to the judgment of the Court below in this case, is in ordering the defendants’ plea of the general issue to be stricken out, on the ground, that it was not an issuable plea. The plea was sworn to, and in general terms, denied the indebtedness of the defendant to the plaintiff. In our 'judgment, the legal effect of a plea of the general issue by the defendant, is an- absolute and general denial of what ’*is alleged in the plaintiff’s declaration, whereby the fact of indebtedness is affirmed on one side and denied on the other, which denial of indebtedness to the plaintiff on the part of the defendant is an issuable defense: 3d Blackstone’s Commentaries, 305; and if sworn to by the defendant, entitles him to go before .a jury for the trial of that issue under the existing law of this State.

Let the judgment of the Court below be reversed.