Court Opinion

ID: 9602748
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:59:35.299059+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:06.335929
License: Public Domain

Almand, Justice,
dissenting. The controlling question raised by the general demurrer is whether the material allegations of the petition, relating to different causes of action, are in the alternative or disjunctive. If they are, and any one of them is insufficient, the entire pleading is bad in substance and subject to attack by general demurrer. Where two matters are pleaded in the disjunctive, one of which is good and the other not, the petition will be treated as pleading no more than the latter. Doyal v. Russell, 183 Ga. 518 (4) (189 S. E. 32); Groover v. Savannah Bank & Trust Co., 186 Ga. 476 (2) (198 *323S. E. 217); Consolidated Distributors v. City of Atlanta, 193 Ga. 853, 858 (20 S. E. 2d, 421); W. P. Brown & Sons Lumber Co. v. Echols, 200 Ga. 284 (2) (36 S. E. 2d, 762).
The term “disjunctive” means “one which is placed between two contraries, by the affirming of one of which the other is taken away.” Black’s Law Diet. A pleading is in the alternative “when it alleges substantive facts so disjunctively that it can not be determined upon which of them the pleader intends to rely as. basis for recovery. In either case the petition would be subject to special demurrer, but in the latter case it would also be subject to general demurrer if any one of the alternatives be insufficient.” Groover v. Savannah Bank & Trust Co., supra, p. 478.
The primary purpose of the plaintiff’s petition is to cancel certain deeds as a cloud upon his title to a tract of timber, on the ground that the defendant Mrs. Rylee, the' grantee in the deeds, never delivered the deeds to the land in question to the grantees. Then, by alternative allegations, the plaintiff alleges that, if his plea as to this be not sustained, he should have judgment against the grantor, Mrs. Rylee, and against his predecessor in title for a breach of warranty. In one breath he asserts title to the timber because of the invalidity of the deeds, and in the next breath he asks for damages against two other defendants on the assumption that the deeds are valid. The prayer of the petition for cancellation of the deeds is barred by the statute of limitations (Harrison v. Holsenbeck, 208 Ga. 410, 67 S. E. 2d, 311), and though the remaining prayers be good in substance, they fall with the bad part of the petition. The judgment dismissing the petition on general demurrer was proper, and should- be affirmed.
I am authorized to say that Wyatt, J., joins in this dissent.