Court Opinion

ID: 9584441
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:48:17.78576+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:07:51.317804
License: Public Domain

Fairchild, C. J.
{dissenting). Inconsistent defenses may be pleaded, but each so-called separate defense must allege facts which constitute a separate defense of the defendant against the cause of action presented by the plaintiff.
A demurrer to a separate defense admits all the facts therein well pleaded, but it does not admit erroneous conclusions drawn from such facts by the pleader even though the conclusions bear the semblance of statements of fact.
The proposed defense we are considering does not set forth' the necessary fact to show a right in the defendants to be excused from liability arising from plaintiff’s claim of malpractice against the defendants. In Papenfus v. Shell Oil Co. 254 Wis. 233, 239, 35 N. W. (2d) 920, it was said: “In a long line of decisions this court has held that payments voluntarily made to an injured person inure to his benefit and not to the benefit of a tort-feasor whose wrongful act caused the injury.” And in the same case it was said: “While under the law of accord and satisfaction a settlement with one joint tort-feasor bars recovery against all other tort-feasors for the same cause, the granting of a covenant not to sue does not have such effect.”
What is pleaded here as a separate defense is nothing more than a recital of evidence which might be relative and material if the defendants were joint tort-feasors with the individual whose act might have been negligent and resulted in injury bringing the plaintiff’s wife into the charge of defendants. The defendants do not put forth in their pleading any such relation to one who has bought his peace which *430entitles them to a credit on damages for which they are solely responsible if responsible at all. They have paid nothing, and they do not claim to be joint tort-feasors or “consecutive tort-feasors.” The stage reached in the proceedings so far as this separate defense is concerned is not one where it is timely to pass upon the relevancy and materiality of evidence which, under sufficient pleading, may or may not be admissible. There is, of course, an essential difference between matters of pleading and matters of evidence. The ruling at the circuit sustaining the demurrer should be affirmed.