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27 Ala. 44

State v. Brantley

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided June 15, 1855

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1855-06-15

Tried before the Hon. George D. Shortridge. Soike facias on a forfeited recognizance, against Henry S. Brantley and his sureties, of whom the latter only were served with process. The sureties appeared, and filed seveu special pleas in answer to the scire facias, of which the second plea was as follows : “ 2.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1855-06-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 11 later decisions — most recently July 1959

11 state decisions

3018551860187018801890190019101920193019401950decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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RICE, J.

¶1If the truth of one good plea in bar of the action is duly established by verdict, the defendant is entitled to judgment, although all his other pleas are both bad and false. — Barber v. Dixon, 1 Wilson’s Rep. 44 ; Firemen’s Insurance Co. of Mobile v. Cochran & Co., at the present term; Worford v. Isbel, 1 Bibb’s Rep. 247.

¶2In the present case, the jury found all the issues (including the issue on the second plea) for the defendants. That plea was not demurred to, and no error has been committed by the court below in relation to it. That plea is good, and the proof of its truth absolutely destroys the plaintiff’s action. Watkins v. Baird, 6 Mass. R. 506 ; Thompson v. Lockwood, 15 Johns. R. 256 ; 2 Greenl. Ev. § 302.

¶3As the court below committed no error in relation to that plea, we are not authorized to deprive the defendants of the benefit of the verdict establishing its truth, merely because the court below may have committed errors in its rulings as to other and independent pleas. If there was error in overruling the demurrers to the third and fourth pleas, such error had no connection with and no influence upon the second plea, nor did it contribute in any way to the proof of the truth of that plea. We do not here allow to the defendants any benefit from their third and fourth pleas. We consider those two pleas as, in effect, stricken out of the record. The verdict ascertaining the truth of the second plea is sufficient, per se, to sustain the judgment for the defendants.

¶4If the verdict had been general for the defendants, ánd had not shown affirmatively that the jury found “ the issues in favor of the defendants”, it is possible we might have held that we would not interpret the verdict as finding all the issues for the defendants ; and that, therefore,' the error in any of the rulings of the court as to the third and fourth pleas, would be ground of reversal, if indeed such error was found to exist. But as the verdict shows clearly that the jury found the issue on the second plea, as well as the issues on the other pleas, in favor of the defendants, the rulings of the court as to the third and fourth pleas, .even if erroneous, constitute no ground of reversal; because there was no error committed by the *47court as to the second plea, and the finding of the truth of that plea, per se, absolutely destroys the plaintiff’s action.

¶5We do not decide whether there was error in the rulings of the court as to the third and fourth pleas, or as to the replications to the fourth plea. If there was, it is error from which it is clear no injury resulted to the plaintiff.

¶6The judgment is affirmed.

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