34 So. 2d 807 | La. Ct. App. | 1948
Plaintiff appeals from a judgment of the district court which sustained a plea of prescription and dismissed his suit.
The cause of action is based on a tort which is alleged to have been committed on June 30, 1945. In the petition it is alleged that on that day, at about twelve o'clock, Chester A. Achord, Jr., was driving a 1941 Nash Sedan automobile, which belonged to the plaintiff, when it was struck with great force and severely damaged by a motorcycle which was being operated by Carl Holmes, the unemancipated minor son of the defendant W.M. Holmes, the collision having taken place at the junction of Scenic Highway and Wyandotte Street, north of the city limits of the city of Baton Rouge. The demand is for the sum of $400, the damage done to the Nash automobile.
The present suit was filed on July 30, 1947 and domiciliary service made on the defendant on the same day. It would appear therefore that it was more than two years since the date of the accident when this suit was filed and service of citation made, but in order to get around the delay and save his demand from the effect of the one year prescriptive period, plaintiff alleges that at the time the accident was investigated, defendant's minor son gave his name to the representative of the State Police as "Carl Thomas" of 1127 St. Joseph St., Baton Rouge, Louisiana, but at that time he failed to give the name of his father It might be added here that plaintiff does not allege that the young man was asked who his father was.
Plaintiff then sets out that several directories to which he had access showed that the premises at which the address was given, were occupied by one J.M. Holmes and accordingly on July 25, 1945, a letter was addressed on his behalf to J.M. Holmes residing at that address making demand on him for damages sustained in the collision. He alleges that no reply ever was made to that letter and on June 27, 1946, acting on the belief that John M. Holmes of 1127 St. Joseph St., Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was the father of the minor Carl Holmes, he caused a suit to be filed against the said John M. Holmes being suit No. 24981 of the docket of the district court of East Baton Rouge Parish.
He then alleges upon information and belief, that the defendant herein, W.M. Holmes, was residing at the address 1127 St. Joseph Street for the reason that the return to the citation in the former suit showed that domiciliary service had been made at that same address by handing the citation to Mrs. M.L. Holmes. He avers further on information and belief that the said Mrs. M.L. Holmes to whom the petition and citation in the former suit was given, is the mother of the defendant, W.M. Holmes; that the defendant herein, as well as the minor Carl Holmes, all reside together at that address; that W.M. Holmes had notice of the filing of the suit on June 28, 1946 and therefore the prescription applicable in such cases was interrupted by the filing of that suit.
The trial judge did not assign written reasons for the judgment rendered by him.
[1, 2] Citation to a defendant, which is the judicial notice to him to appear and answer the demand that is being made against him, is the only form of notice which will interrupt prescription. Civil Code, Art.
We cannot agree with counsel on this point. The cases he cites were suits directed against, corporations and in each, because of the peculiar facts existing, it was held that the citation, as addressed, was sufficient to constitute notice to the real defendant against whom demand was being made. For instance, in Jackson v. American Employers' Insurance Company,
Lunkin v. Triangle Farms, Inc.,
Bowerman v. Pacific Mutual Ins. Co., La. Sup.,
For that same reason we hold in the instant case that as two years had passed since the commission of the tort complained of without the filing of a suit against the real defendant, the father of the minor who is alleged to have committed the tort, and since we know that he never had judicial notice of the demand that is now being made against him, and there is at most only an assumption that he had actual notice, the plea of prescription is valid and it was properly sustained by the trial judge.
Judgment affirmed at the costs of the plaintiff, appellant herein.
ELLIS, J., absent. *810