Case Title: Carter v. Calhoun County Bd. of Ed.

Citation: 345 So. 2d 1351

Docket Number: 

State: alabama

Court: Alabama Supreme Court

Date: 1977-05-06T00:00:00Z

Document:
345 So. 2d 1351 (1977)
Vergie CARTER
v.
CALHOUN COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION et al.
SC 2175.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
May 6, 1977.
Betty C. Love of Love, Love, Lawrence & Burton, Talladega, for appellant.
H. R. Burnham and William Henry Agee of Burnham, Klinefelter, Halsey & Love, Anniston, for appellees.
SHORES, Justice.
This appeal presents a single question: did the trial court err in granting the defendants' motion to dismiss Count Two of the plaintiff's complaint which alleged the following:
The plaintiff is Mrs. Vergie Carter; and the defendants are the Calhoun County Board of Education, et al. Mrs. Carter appealed from the order granting the motion to dismiss Count Two.
Plaintiff concedes in brief that the allegations of Count Two of the complaint that the Board ". . . `expressly' . . . promised to furnish plaintiff a reasonably safe place in which to work." are not advanced by the plaintiff as grounds for reversal. It is her contention that the allegation of an implied promise to furnish a reasonably safe place to work is a sufficient allegation of an action based upon breach of an implied contract to withstand a motion to dismiss.
As has been said so often, Rule 8, ARCP, is complied with if the complaint gives the defendant ". . . fair notice of what the plaintiff's claim is and the grounds upon which it rests." Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 47, 78 S. Ct. 99, 102, 2 L. Ed. 2d 80 (1957). In pleading an action on a contract implied in fact, the allegations must show the facts and circumstances from which the agreement can be inferred. Wright & Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure: Civil § 1235; Berry v. Druid City Hospital Board, Ala., 333 So. 2d 796 (1976).
In Sims v. Etowah County Board of Education, Ala., 337 So. 2d 1310, 1312 (1976), the allegations were:
The court, referring to these allegations, said:
We think Sims, supra, is dispositive of the case here. The complaint in the instant case alleges that the defendants impliedly promised to furnish a safe and proper place for the plaintiff to do her work and that the defendants breached that contract. *1353 True, the allegations do not specify with particularity the manner by which the defendants failed to provide a reasonably safe place for the plaintiff to perform her part of the contract; but we do not think the rules require such particularity, so long as the allegations sufficiently inform the defendants of what the plaintiff's claim is and the grounds upon which it is based. Although the breach of the implied agreement is only minimally alleged, we believe the spirit of the rules requires that the plaintiff be given an opportunity to proceed with her claim; and if she is able to present evidence from which the jury could find that the parties to this litigation did assent to an implied agreement, and that the defendants breached that agreement, resulting in the plaintiff's injuries, she is entitled to have a jury pass on that issue. Obviously, the plaintiff has the burden of proving that the defendants did impliedly promise to furnish her a safe place in which to work, and that they breached that agreement.
As was first stated in Conley v. Gibson, supra, and thereafter often restated:
This court has followed this rule in a number of cases. Watwood v. R. R. Dawson Bridge Co., Inc., 293 Ala. 578, 307 So. 2d 692 (1975); Bowling v. Pow, 293 Ala. 178, 301 So. 2d 55 (1974).
The judgment granting the motion to dismiss is reversed and the cause remanded.
REVERSED AND REMANDED.
TORBERT, C. J., and MADDOX, FAULKNER and BEATTY, JJ., concur.