Court Opinion

ID: 9718031
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:15:26.687808+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:57.013202
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing.
STRUTZ, Judge.
The plaintiff has filed a forty-page petition for rehearing, in which he lists twenty-eight separate specifications or reasons why he believes the decision of this court in this action is erroneous, and in which he prays that a new trial be granted. We have given careful consideration to these specifications, and we again conclude that the plaintiff’s complaint fails to state a cause of action for interference with the business or trade of the plaintiff.
The petitioner strenuously urges that the various wrongful acts which he alleges were committed by the defendants constitute a continuing tort. As we view the pleadings and the evidence which the plaintiff introduced in support thereof, what the plaintiff did allege and attempt to prove was a series of separate and dissimilar wrongful acts, as to each of which our law provides a separate statute of limitations. Such statute of limitations commences to run from the time of the commission of each wrongful act. Such separate and dissimilar wrongful acts do not constitute a continuing tort.
Our decision does not, as contended by the plaintiff, mean that no right of action exists in this State for interference with business or trade. All that we do hold is that the pleading of the plaintiff and the evidence which he produced in this case do not constitute or prove such a tort.
The plaintiff further contends that the decision of this court deprives him of his right to a jury trial. That argument, of course, is wholly without merit. This court has repeatedly reversed jury verdicts where the complaint fails to state a cause of action or where, if the complaint does state a cause of action, the evidence fails to support the allegations of the complaint. Having determined, as a matter of law, that the trial court erred when it denied the defendants’ motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, the decision of this court was proper.
The petition for rehearing is denied.
TEIGEN, C. J., and ERICKSTAD and KNUDSON, JJ., concur.
PAULSON, J., not being a member of the Court at the time of submission of this case, did not participate.