Court Opinion

ID: 9587946
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:28:16.951346+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:32:21.696053
License: Public Domain

On Motion of Ford Motor Co. for Rehearing.
The petition alleges that the motor vehicle “contained at the time of its manufacture, latent undisclosed defects which made same inherently and imminently dangerous, in that said motor vehicle would not function as same was supposed to and became unmanageable and uncontrollable, as shown herein,” and alleges in another paragraph that “no external cause of failure (other than the latent defects in said motor vehicle) made same veer from its northbound traffic lane—some mechanical defects between the steering mechanism and the front wheels, unknown to the plaintiff, which existed in the motor vehicle at the time of the purchase thereof, being the cause of such malfunction. . . .” The defendant contends that these allegations are not related and that the petition does not allege, as stated in the court’s opinion, that the latent defects were present in the automobile at the time of its manufacture.
The allegations of a petition, as amended must be considered *114as a whole. G. & R. Waterproofing Co. v. Brogdon, 104 Ga. App. 112 (121 SE2d 77); Southern Bonded Warehouse Co. v. Roadway Exp., Inc., 104 Ga. App. 458 (122 SE2d 147); Frazier v. Southern R. Co., 200 Ga. 590, 597 (37 SE2d 774). There is utterly no inconsistency or conflict between the two above allegations. It would indeed require a strained and unnatural construction to infer from this petition that the defects described are alleged to exist at the time of purchase and at the time the steering mechanism failed but are not alleged to be present at the time of manufacture. Such an inference would be unreasonable and against the pleader’s intendment and is not required by the cases cited by the defendant to the effect that pleadings are to be construed most strongly against the pleader. National Fire Ins. Co. v. Banister, 104 Ga. App. 13 (1) (121 SE2d 46); Southern Bonded Warehouse Co. v. Roadway Exp., Inc., 104 Ga. App. 458 (1), supra; Friedman v. Sawan, Inc., 103 Ga. App. 500, 503 (119 SE2d 707); Raines v. Jones, 96 Ga. App. 412, 414, supra; Belk-Gallant Co. v. Cordell, 107 Ga. App. 785, 787, supra; New Cigar Co. v. Broken Spur, Inc., 103 Ga. App. 395, 398 (119 SE2d 133); Georgia Power Co. v. Leonard, 187 Ga. 608, 614 (1 SE2d 579).
The petition, considered as a whole, alleges that the defect existed at the time of manufacture, at the time of purchase and at the time of the collision. All three of these allegations are necessary elements of the plaintiff’s cause of action based upon the statutory implied warranty.

Motion for rehearing denied.