Court Opinion

ID: 6544116
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-19 22:18:10.76625+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:55:55.152404
License: Public Domain

Wood, J. I concur in the opinion of the court except as to what is said in regard to the counter-claim. Mr.Bliss says: “The cause of action has been described as being a legal wrong threatened or committed against the complaining party; and the object of the action is to prevent or redress the wrong by obtaining some legal relief. The subject of the action is clearly neither of these; it is not the wrong which gives the plaintiff the right to ask the interposition of the court, nor is it that which the court is asked to do' for him, but it must be the matter or thing, differing both from the wrong and the relief, in regard to which the controversy has arisen, concerning which the wrong has been done; and this is, ordinarily, the property, or the contract and its subject-matter, or other thing involved in the dispute.” Bliss, Code Pldg. § 126, and note. This is sensible and. plain, and ought to be adopted as the proper construction. The court, in my judgment, fails to properly discriminate between the cause of action and the subject of the action. Here the cause of action is the alleged failure to convey certain lands by deed. The object of the action is to require the appellant to make the deed conveying the land, and thus redress the wrong done in withholding it. But the subject of the action is not the wrong done, nor the relief asked, but it is the land itself for which the deed is sought, and about which the controversy has arisen. There is no good reason why a mortgage given by appellee to appellant upon the same land should not be foreclosed in this proceeding, but, on the contrary, the best of reason why it should be done, namely, to end the controversy between the parties litigant concerning this land in one suit, and thus avoid the delay and costs incident to another suit. Thus both the letter and spirit of the statute to avoid a multiplicity of suits would be subserved.