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53 Wis. 98

Bronson v. Markey

Wisconsin Supreme Court

Decided October 18, 1881

Wisconsin Supreme Court · decided 1881-10-18

The complaint, after alleging the partnership of the plaintiffs, states that, between October 16, 1877, and April 3, 1878, at the special instance and request of the defendant Ja/mes Marhey, they sold and delivered to him certain lumber and other building materials for the erection of a building, for the agreed price of $642.85, which the said defendant agreed to pay to them, and that said sum became due and payable to plaintiffs from said defendants before the commencement…

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1881-10-18

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently November 1935

5 state decisions

30188118901900191019201930decided

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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Orton, J.

¶1The general demurrer to the first count of the complaint was properly overruled, because it contains the statement of a good cause of action in itself.

¶2The principle asserted in the brief of the learned counsel for the appellants as “ a settled rule, that each cause of action stated in a complaint must stand or fall by itself,” is fatal to the demurrer and to this appeal. Curtis v. Moore, 15 Wis., 134; Catlin v. Pedrick, 17 Wis., 88; Sabin v. Austin, 19 Wis., 421; Wheeler v. Hall, 41 Wis., 447. After the assertion of this “settled rule,” the learned counsel rather illogically refers to the imperfect and defective statements in the second count, in which a mechanic’s -lien is attempted to be set up, as the grounds of the demurrer to the first count alone, when, in such first count, nothing at all is said about a mechanic’s lien. The first count is for goods, wares and merchandise sold and delivered for a specific or agreed price, which sum became due and payable before the commencement of the action; and the facts alleged therein, if proved, are clearly sufficient to entitle the plaintiff to a personal judgment against the defendant James Markey.

¶3That Margaret A. Markey, the wife of James, is not interested in the first cause of action, can be taken advantage of only by demurrer or plea in abatement on the ground of mis-joinder of defendants, and not by a general demurrer on the ground that the first count does not state a cause of action. If such defect is sought to be reached by demurrer, it must be by the party defendant so misjoined. This demurrer is interposed by James Markey alone, who is interested in the matters of the first count. Truesdell v. Rhodes, 26 Wis., 215.

¶4By the Oowii.— The order of the circuit court overruling the demurrer is affirmed.

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