Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

27 Mo. 434

Burns v. Patrick

Supreme Court of Missouri

Decided October 15, 1858

Supreme Court of Missouri · decided 1858-10-15

Louis Land Court. The complaint is in substance as follows: The plaintiff alleges that the defendants, “ with force and strong hand, entered upon and into the… Held: the lot aforesaid from your complainant. Wherefore your complainant prays,” &c. I. The complaint shows that at the time of the alleged entry the tenants of plaintiff were in possession of the premises. The landlord can not maintain the action. ('24 Mo. 107 ; 26 Mo. 216.) The instructions given were erroneous.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1858-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently May 1914

5 state decisions

201858186018701880189019001910decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Scott, Judge,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2The plaintiff in this action can not recover on the ground that the defendants wrongfully and without force by disseizin obtained and continued in possession of the premises in dispute after demand made in writing for the deliverance of possession thereof, because there is no proof of any such demand in the bill of exceptions. There is a demand copied among the papers in the cause, but not being embodied in the bill of exceptions it can not be noticed by this court. Moreover, the complaint is so framed as not to bring it within that provision of the statute.

¶3The complaint on which this proceeding is based shows that the plaintiff is not entitled to recover. The complaint is that the tenants of the plaintiff were turned out of possession ; and if this was so, then the tenants should have instituted this proceeding. It is no answer to this objection that it was not raised in the court below by demurrer or in arrest of judgment. It is well settled that when a record is brought into this court, and it appears from the face of the record that the plaintiff has no cause of action, the judgment will be reversed, although the point was not made in the court below. This has been long the practice of this court. As liberal as the present practice act is, the defendant, by not taking the exception that the petition does not state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action by demurrer or answer, does not waive the same. (R. C. 1855, p. 1231, § 2.)

¶4We do not deem it necessary to review other points made in the cause, as they were mostly founded on the language of the various instructions and involved no principle.

¶5Judgment reversed;

the other judges concur.
/27/mo/434 · .json · Public domain