Court Opinion

ID: 9562184
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:23:20.899501+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:14.799650
License: Public Domain

Almand, Justice,
dissenting. I dissent from the rulings in headnotes 2, 3, and 4 and the corresponding divisions of the opinion and from the judgment of affirmance.
Zucker, by his equitable petition, alleging himself to be the owner of a described tract of land, sought to restrain Cox from using the driveway between his property and that of Cox as a means of access to a loading platform of a warehouse of Cox, located at the east end of the driveway. Ten months after Zucker filed his petition, Mrs. Bobbie C. Robertson filed her petition for intervention in the case, in which she alleged that “inadvertently she was not named as a party plaintiff in said proceedings, even though she is a tenant in common with the said John Edmund Zucker in the real property” described in the petition, she having acquired a one-half undivided interest in the property on July 5, 1947. She adopted “the allegations set forth in the original petition the same as if she had been a party when the same was filed . . . and seeks the same relief against the defendant as if prayed for in the original petition.” She prayed for no separate or independent relief. The intervention was filed by the same attorneys who represented Zucker. Subsequently, an amendment to the petition was filed jointly in the names of both parties. At the trial of the case, on the issue of whether the plaintiff Zucker was entitled to a permanent injunction, a joint verdict was directed in favor of the plaintiffs and a decree was entered upon this verdict.
*57The majority opinion in effect holds that, though the evidence is sufficient to show that Zucker is estopped by his acts and conduct from asserting that the defendant is not entitled to use the driveway; it was error to direct a verdict in favor of Zucker; but since the evidence was insufficient to show that the intervenor was estopped, an injunction in favor of Zucker and the intervenor against the defendant was demanded by the evidence. We thus have an anomalous result, whether Mrs. Robertson is treated as an intervenor or as a full party coplaintiff, of a verdict being directed for a party where it is ruled that as a matter of law he is not entitled to a verdict. If Zucker now acquires the interest of Mrs. Robertson in the property now jointly owned, and Cox attempts to use the driveway, he will be met with a plea of res adjudicata.
From the time Mrs. Robertson came into the case, she has been referred to and treated as an intervenor. The majority so treat her. She sought no relief other than that sought by Zucker, and adopted the allegations and the prayers of Zucker’s petition. Her right to any relief was dependent upon Zucker’s right. This court has repeatedly held that an intervenor in an equity suit takes the case as he finds it and cannot establish equities in his own behalf by intervention where the original petition in the case in which he intervenes does not allege an equitable cause of action. Smith v. Manning, 155 Ga. 209(4) (116 S. E. 813); Merritt v. Georgia Chemical Works, 170 Ga. 153 (152 S. E. 246); Dwight v. First Nat. Bank of Reynolds, 159 Ga. 188 (125 S. E. 62); Manning v. Wills, 193 Ga. 82(4) (17 S. E. 2d 261). The voluntary or involuntary dismissal of the main case would carry with it the intervention. Jackson v. Taylor, 169 Ga. 300(1) (150 S. E. 156). The mere fact that the case goes to trial on the merits of the main case does not change the status of the intervenor. Her right to relief is still dependent upon the plaintiff in the main bill proving his right to the relief sought. A nonsuit granted against the main plaintiff would carry with it the claim of the intervenor. Where one (an intervenor) chooses to ride on a horse (the petition) driven by another (the plaintiff), he cannot, when the driver is dismounted (fails to prevail), take the reins and ride to his own destination. A motion for a directed verdict is somewhat in the nature of a general demurrer to the *58sufficiency of the evidence to authorize a recovery for the plaintiff. It seems clear that if Zucker was not entitled to a verdict in this case, it necessarily follows that the intervenor must suffer the same fate.
Even if it be assumed that Mrs. Robertson occupies the status of a coplaintiff, if Zucker cannot prevail, then neither can she for the reason that she is a tenant in common with Zucker, and when she came into the case the action became a joint one. One of them not being entitled to recover, a verdict for both parties would be contrary to law. DeVaughn v. McLeroy, 82 Ga. 687 (6) (10 S. E. 211); Jefferson Fertilizer Co. v. Rich, 182 Ala. 633 (62 So. 40). It being conceded that it was error to direct a verdict for Zucker, it follows from the view that I entertain that it was error to direct a verdict in favor of the intervenor.
I am authorized to state that Wyatt, P. J., and Mobley, J., concur in this dissent