Court Opinion

ID: 9808762
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:49:54.552588+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:18:19.463665
License: Public Domain

Sjiith, C. J.,
Dissenting. — In my opinion there was error in permitting the plaintiff to put in his replication and in the judgment which was rendered:—
A set off is but a defence to the action, and its office is to make an appropriation of money which the plaintiff owes *532the defendant to.the discharge in whole or in part of the demand asserted in the suit. It can ■ go no further than to defeat the action. It differs from a counter claim only in the disposition made of the excess, if there be an excess, of the counter claim over the sum due', the plaintiff, and in allowing the defendant to have judgment for such excess. They are essentially alike in the rules of pleading which are applicable to them. I think it clear from the authorities and upon sound reasoning that the defendant alone can set up the defence. Some of them will be referred to. In Ulrich v. Berger, 4 Watts & Sergt. (Penn.) 19, the Court thus lays down the doctrine: Set off is a creature of positive law and exists only when it is allowed by law. Our act allows it only in favor of the defendant, and there consequently can not be such a thing as a set off against a set off. A law suit might become very inconveniently complicated were it otherwise, as the contest might in the end be shifted from the original ground and the plaintiff recover a different and greater demand than the one laid in the declaration. The same doctrine was declared in Gable v. Perry, 13 Penn. 181. So in Hall v. Cook, 1 Ala. 629, the Court say : Where a defendant proves a set off to a greater, amount than the demand sued on, the statute of set off will not allow the plaintiff to rebut the defendant’s proof by showing that the latter is indebted to him in a large sum which is not in suit. The plaintiff' is permitted to show that the set off is not admissible or that it is a debt which he is not bound by the law to pay, but beyond this he can not go, in his replication or proof; — citing 3 Starkie Ev. 1317. And this is affirmed in the subsequent case of Hudwell v. Scott, 2 Ala. 569. The rule as collected from the adjudged cases is thus laid down by a recent writer on the law of set off: The plaintiff can not avail himself of a set off against a set off, but is restricted to showing that the set off is inadmissible, or is a debt which he is not bound to pay. Waterman on Set Off § 595.
*533The force of the reasoning can not be successfully resisted. It is obvious that if the plaintiff could reply a set off, then equally could the defendant set up a defence to the new claim, and the pleading instead of tending to a single issue might expand and branch out into numerous issues. In the present case, instead of trying two actions, which the plea of set off itself involves, there were three tried ; and there might have been an indefinite number upon the principle that permitted the third. When the plaintiff brings his suit upon any particular demand, he makes his election, and, unless under our liberal system of amendment, can not enforce in that action any other.
The new system of pleading and practice has not changed the rule. The counter claim defined in the Code is a defence which the defendant and no one else can set up. It declares that the answer of the defendant must contain a general or specific denial &c, or “ a statement of any new matter constituting a defence or counter claim in ordinary and concise language without repetition/’ § 100. And the counter claim itself is described in the next section, — “ it must be one existing in favor of a defendant and against a plaintiff between whom a several judgment might be had in the action.” No other replication is required of plaintiff than to controvert the counter claim or to defend himself against it. § 105.
In Williams v. Jones, 1 Bush. 627, the very point now under discussion was decided in Kentucky. “ It is also insisted,” say the Court, “that under the pleadings and proofs, the account exhibited with the plaintiff’s reply should not have been allowed to extinguish or discharge so much of the debt pleaded as a set off by the appellant Davis; but although the account is not and could not have been pleaded in reply as a set off, because as suggested a reply is restricted by the Civil Code § 133 to statements constituting a defence to the set off or counter claim, of the defendant, it was proper to suggest in the reply as a defence to the set off of Davis, that *534the goods for which he claims were sold and delivered in payment of the appellee’s account, and we think the facts proved authorized the presumption that such was the case.”
There is another insuperable objection to the allowance of the plaintiff’s counter claim : In amount it was fo'r a sum in excess of a Justice’s jurisdiction; one or the other of two consequences follow, — either the replication was inadmissible, or it destroyed the jurisdiction. The plaintiff’s counter claim was for $332 and unless it could have been originally sued on before a Justice, could not in this way be brought under his jurisdiction. That jurisdiction is limited to claims not exceeding $200 and the mandates of the constitution and statute can not in this or any other way be evaded. The condition of the cause produced by the ruling of the Court was substantially to make the claim of the plaintiff $437, consisting of his account for the lumber sold and for deficiency in land, and that of the defendant’s set off of $200. These respective claims are adjusted at their full amount, .and the balance thus ascertained reduced to the sum ■of $200. It is true the action as originally instituted was within the jurisdiction of a Justice, but that jurisdiction would have been ousted by an increase above $200 of the plaintiff’s claim through an amendment of the complaint, and he would have been compelled to dismiss the suit. This effect conclusively proves this want of power to make the amendment, or which is the same thing, increase the demand by a new counter claim, and thus defeat an action rightfully begun. If the plaintiff asked this, it was in substance assenting to a nonsuit or dismissal, for the Justice could not allow the amendment and take cognizance of the cause. The like result must follow a similar action of the Court, because the Superior Court alone has jurisdiction of a cause brought before it on appeal when the Justice himself had it. Any change which would have defeated the jurisdiction of the Justice, if allowed when the cause was *535■depending before bim, will have the same effect, if allowed in tlie appellate Court.
It is to be further remarked that there is a variance in the sum demanded in the complaint and that adjudged in the Superior Court. This the rules of pleading and practice do not allow, and as the judgment would be reversed on a writ of error where that mode of proceeding prevails, it can not be sustained on our review of it on the appeal. Singleton v. Kennedy, Conf. Rep. 520.
I am therefore of opinion that the Court erred in allowing the plaintiff’s replication of a counter claim, and in adjudging to the plaintiff a sum in excess of his original demand.