Case ID: ad_91/html/0415-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Willard Bartlett, J. :", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Margaret C. Brown, Respondent, v. Edward Everett Cady, Appellant.
    
      Negligence in the treatment of the plaintiff’s teeth by the defendant, a dentist— when the details constitute but one cause of action.
    
    A complaint in an action brought to recover damages resulting from the alleged negligence of the defendant, a dentist, in treating the plaintiff’s teeth, charged the defendant with negligence, (1) in removing two teeth which did not require removal; (2) in allowing portions thereof to remain in the gum, and (3) in putting in bridge work which was defective and improperly fitted. These several acts were alleged to have resulted in the production of abscesses on the gum and necrosis of the jaw bone.
    
      Held, that the complaint stated but a single cause of action.
    Appeal by the defendant, Edward Everett Cady, from an order of the Supreme Court, made at the Kings County Special Term and entered in the office of the clerk of the county of Kings on the 13th day of November, 1903, denying the defendant’s motion to require the plaintiff to amend .the complaint by separately stating and numbering the different causes of' action and by making the complain! more definite and certain.
    
      John N. Blair, for the appellant.
    
      Joseph T. Magee, for the respondent.
   Willard Bartlett, J. :

This is an action against a dentist to recover damages alleged to have been sustained by the plaintiff in consequence of the defendant’s negligence in treating her teeth. The complaint charges that he was negligent (1) in removing two teeth which did not require removal; (2) in allowing portions thereof to remain in the gum, and (3) in putting in bridge work which was defective and improperly fitted. These several acts are alleged to have resulted in the production of abscesses on the gum and necrosis of the jaw bone. They are obviously stated as the details or steps in a course of negligent professional treatment terminating in a single injury; and thus regarded they do not constitute separate causes of action, and may properly be set forth in. one count.' (Dickens v. N. Y. Central R. R. Co., 13 How. Pr. 228.)

The motion, therefore, so far as it was based upon section 483 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which requires separate causes oí action in a complaint to be separately stated and numbered, was properly denied. Nor is there any adequate basis for the suggestion that the complaint is indefinite and uncertain within the meaning of section 546. •

The order should be affirmed.

All concurred.

Order affirmed, with ten dollars costs and disbursements.