Case Name: Drummond v. Husson
Court: New York Superior Court
Jurisdiction: New York
Decision Date: 1852-11
Citations: 1 Duer 633
Docket Number: 
Parties: Drummond v. Husson.
Judges: 
Reporter: Reports of cases argued and determined in the Superior Court of the city of New York
Volume: 8
Pages: 633–634

Head Matter:
Drummond v. Husson.
(Nov. 1852.)
The Code, as amended in 1852, has not substituted an order for a judgment mail eases where a demurrer is sustained or overruled.
The decision is still a judgment, where a demurrer to the whole pleading is sustained. It is an order where the demurrer is partial.
Upon an appeal from such an order only ten dollars costs can be given.
Tim court, at the General Term in October, had affirmed the decision of the judge at special term, overruling a demurrer to the defendant’s answer. The demurrer, however, related only to a part of the answer, and it was overruled by an order and not by a judgment. On the settlement of the order or judgment of affirmance, a question arose as to the costs to be allowed to the defendant upon the appeal.
W. Watson, for plaintiff.
S. F. Clarkson, for defendant.

Opinion:
Bosworth, J.
The second subdivision in § 349 of the Code as last amended, gives an appeal from an order, sustaining or overruling a demurrer, but I do not understand this provision as converting a decision upon a demurrer, in all cases, from a judgment into a mere order. When a demurrer is sustained which goes to the whole complaint or answer, the decision, as it determines that the party against whom it is given has no' right of action or no defence, is in its nature a final judgment, and this is so even when liberty to amend is given, if the party fail to avail himself of the privilege within the limited time; but when the demurrer relates only to a part of a pleading, the decision sustaining or overruling it, may with great propriety be termed an order, since its only effect is to strike out or retain that part of the pleading to which the demurrer applies, leaving the other issues undetermined.
In this case the demurrer was only to a part of the answer, and consequently was properly described as an order, and being so, the question as to the costs to be allowed upon this appeal is free from difficulty.
The sixth subdivision in § 307 of the Code gives before argument $15, and after argument $30, upon an appeal from the special to the general terms, and contains only an exception of an appeal from an order granting or denying a non-enumerated motion. The defendant would have been entitled to the costs thus given, had the terms' of the exception bSen unaltered, since by rule twenty-seven of this court, an appeal from a decision upon a demurrer, whether a judgment or an order, is in all cases an enumerated motion; but the exception as amended in 1852, now embraces appeals in all the cases mentioned in § 349 as amended, and it has already been stated that an appeal from an order sustaining or overruling a demurrer is one of those cases. The costs of the defendant must therefore be limited to $10, which are all that we can give.
Approved, upon consultation, by all the judges.