Case ID: ohio-st_18/html/490, 491-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Welch, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

*John G. Peebles, Executor of Robert Hamilton, deceased, v. Solomon Isaminger and others.
    1. In cases reserved the court will not go beyond the issues made in the pleadings to anticipate possible questions that may arise in the further progress of the case.
    2. Where the answer to a petition seeking equitable relief sets up matter modifying the plaintiffs right to relief, or entitling respondent to any counter-relief which he asks, a demurrer to such answer will be overruled, although the answer contains no complete bar to the action.
    Abpeal. Reserved in the district court of Jackson county.
    The action is brought upon a mortgage made in 1854, by Solomon and James Isaminger, to plaintiff’s testator, Hamilton, upon 3-32 parts of certain real estate which had been conveyed to the Isamingers and others in common, the grantees being at the time copartners in a joint stock company for the manufacture of iron, to secure a private debt of the mortgagors. The other, defendants are brought in because they set up some claim to the property.
    The defendants, Daniels and Rathburn and the Buckeye Furnace Company, answer, that said real estate was part of the partnership assets, bought with the money of the firm, necessary to the prosecution of its business, and used for that purpose, and that the mortgagee had full notice of all these facts. They also allege that the partnership was largely in debt at the date of the mortgage; that it finally became insolvent, and, after some changes of its members, became a corporation by the name of the Buckeye Furnace Company, succeeding to and owning all the assets and property of the firm, and liable for all its debts, and being like the firm, insolvent.
    Daniels and Rathburn further answer, setting up a prior and also a junior mortgage made by the firm, and asking a sale of the land to satisfy them. And both respondents insist that the land shall be subjected to the payment of all the creditors of the firm, in preference to the plaintiff, and ask for other relief.
    To these answers the plaintiff demurred ; and the cause coming on for hearing upon the demurrer, was reserved for decision here.
    *The case was argued in this court by couhsel for plaintiff [491 upon the question of the sufficiency of the answers as a bar to the action, and upon questions regarding the amount of interest acquired by Hamilton by virtue of his mortgage, and the class or classes of creditors, if any, that should be jrreferred to him in the disposition of the proceeds of the land.
    No argument was submitted by the counsel for defendants.
    
      O. F. Moore, Jordan & McCauslen, and W. A. Hutchins, for the plaintiff.
    
      McClintick & Smith, and R. C. Hoffman, for defendant.
   Welch, J.

The principal questions argued by counsel have not yet arisen in the case, and we can not properly go beyond the present pleadings to anticipate them. Whether the demurrer to the answers is well taken seems to be the only question legitimately before us, and we decide this, without hesitation, in the negative. It is not necessary that an answer to a petition seeking equitable relief should sot up a complete defense to the action. It is enough that it deny, or confess and avoid, some material part of the plaintiff’s case, so as to modify or abridge his right to relief; or if counter-relief is asked, that it shows a right in the defendant to such counter-relief. Where, as in the present case, such an answer does not profess to be, or is not from its nature necessarily pleaded as a bar to the action, a demurrer to it raises no question of its sufficiency as such. The answer in such a case is more like the old answer in chancery than it is like the common-law plea in bar, or the plea to a bill in equity. A demurrer to an answer was never allowed in chancery practice, if indeed it was ever heard of. The remedy in case of insufficient answer, was by motion to strike it from the files, or to take the bill as confessed notwithstanding the answer. The only question upon such a motion was, whether the answer was pertinent and material to the case. An answer in such cases is always pertinent and material when, in the language of the court in Van Ransselaer v. Price, 4 Paige’s Ch. 174, “it can have any influence whatever in the decision of the suit, either as to the subject-matter of the controversy, the particular relief to be given, or the 492] costs.” *See also Lube’s Eq. Pl. 178; Mitf. Eq. Pl. 249; Van Santvoord’s Pl. (2 ed.) 460, 461, 472, 705. Tried by these rules, it is hardly necessary to say, the answers in question are sufficient, and the cause must be heard upon the facts .they disclose as well as upon the petition, unless those facts are controverted by a reply. We take for granted that leave will be asked .to file such a reply,, as we see by the record this was the course pursued in the common pleas. The demurrer will therefore be overruled, and leave will bogiven to reply if desired.

Day, C. J., and Brinkerhoff, Scott, and White JJ., concurred.