Court Opinion

ID: 9845155
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:16:00.371269+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:53.028793
License: Public Domain

Felton, Chief Judge,
dissenting.  In order to see clearly the exact question for decision it is necessary to quote the allegations of the three counts of the petition bearing on the question, the allegations being the same in each count. They are: Paragraph 3—“On October 7, 1959, the defendant Ford Motor Company had in its employ a man named Seiver or Siever, his initials being ‘T. E.’ according to the best information available to the plaintiff, the exact spelling and initials of his name being known to the defendant Ford Motor Company, whose duties included the investigation of thefts from his employer and the location and return to his employer of any missing property belonging to his employer”; paragraph 4—“For all purposes material to this action the acts of the said Seiver or Siever were performed within the scope of his employment, as the agent and servant of the defendant Ford Motor Company and the acts alleged herein of the said employee are chargeable to the defendant corporation”; paragraph 5—“On the date of October 7, 1959, the defendants Cawthon and Banks acting in concert with and in company with said employee of the defendant cor*32poration, entered upon and into the premises and home of the plaintiff, at a time when the plaintiff and his family were away from home, for the purpose of removing therefrom personal property belonging to the plaintiff.” It seems to me that the majority opinion goes to considerable length to construe the petition in favor of the plaintiff on demurrer, which is a violation of the best known rule of construction of pleadings. The petition in this case simply contains a conflict in allegations which requires a construction against the plaintiff with the result that the petition should be construed to show on its face that the acts charged against Ford’s employee were not within the scope of his employment. This result may not be what the plaintiff intended but this court cannot do anything about that. In the hundreds of cases which have been dismissed on general demurrer the plaintiffs intended to allege a cause of action, as the plaintiff did in this case. He meant to allege that the employee of Ford sought to recover property which he mistakenly thought was Ford’s but that is not What he alleged. He alleged that the employee broke into the house for the purpose of recovering the plaintiff’s property and taking this allegation as true he knew the property belonged to the plaintiff when he broke into the house. There is simply no way in which these allegations can be construed to mean what the majority says they “inferentially” allege. The Supreme Court made such a ruling in Toler v. Goodin, 200 Ga. 527, supra. That ruling was not the law then nor is it the law now. The Toler case cited no law which supported it and this particular ruling has not been followed by the Supreme Court, that I know of, since. The rale the Supreme Court had in mind was the one and the only one which gives any substance to an inferential allegation, and that is that if there are facts alleged, which have a necessary and inevitable consequence the facts will be deemed to have alleged the consequence even though the consequence is not specifically alleged. That rale does not fit this case. There is no rational way in which the cases cited by the majority (except the Toler case) can be construed as authority for the interpretation placed on the petition by the majority. I invite all to check each one. This case is even chained more strictly to the rule of construction *33against the pleader because in this case there is a contradiction which cannot be dissolved by an unwarranted construction. The only way the contradiction can be removed is by the act of the pleader. I invite attention to the various decisions supporting the proposition that the general demurrers in this case should have been sustained. See the approximately 150 cases cited under the catchwords “Ambiguous pleadings” in the annotations to Code § 81-101, and the dissent in the Toler case, supra. Unless the ruling in the Toler case is erased it will be possible in future similar cases for trial courts and this court to circumvent the law as to the construction of pleadings on demurrer.
The demurrers do not raise the question whether damages for humiliation and embarrassment may be recovered in both the counts based on trespass and the one based on the violation of right of privacy. See McKown v. Great A. & P. Tea Co., 99 Ga. App. 120, supra.