(after stating the facts).—I do not deem it necessary to review the action of the court below in sustaining the motion of plaintiff, after the evidence was closed on the trial of the original complaint, to be allowed to amend his complaint. This action was in the discretion of the court below. The contract set out in the amended complaint was executed on the 30th of September, A. D. 1892, and declared to be for the ensuing year. In the closing part of the third subdivision of said complaint it is alleged that the said contract was made for “the crop-raising season of 1892.” This is probably a clerical error. If I so treat it, then the pleadings should be considered on their merits. It is shown on the face of the complaint that the plaintiff and others therein named were shareholders in an unincorporated joint-stock company; and it sets out a contract made by the several individual stockholders with the defendant to do certain things. As the shareholders in such a company are partners (Lindley on Partnership, p. 5; Smith v. Warden, 86 Mo. 382; Richardson v. Pitts, 71 Mo. 128; Martin v. Fewell, 79 Mo. 401; Hurt v. Salisbury, 55 Mo. 310; Pettis v. Atkins, 60 Ill. 454; Flagg v. Stowe, 85 Ill. 164; Hodgson v. Baldwin, 65 Ill. 532), and, as a general rule, the members, however numerous, must join in the suit on such contract (Dicey on Parties, 151), yet, as the contract in the ease at bar shows that the parties of the second part rented their respective shares to the party of the first part, and “party of the first part agrees ... to deliver water to the respective parties,” it must necessarily be construed as a contract wherein, if any damage occurred thereunder to any
If the contract be construed as one for the delivery of so much water to each individual of the second part, and that each one could maintain an action thereon, without joining the others with him, for the damages he might have sustained, the complaint in this case fails to state a cause of action, for nowhere therein is it alleged that plaintiff ever requested defendant to deliver water to him at any place. It is not alleged that plaintiff did not get all the water he contracted for. It is alleged that defendant failed to deliver water on section 17 sufficient to raise a crop, but it does not appear from the contract that the water was to be delivered on that section. Defendant may have delivered it to plaintiff at some other point. It is further alleged that defendant did not deliver sufficient water. The quantity necessary to irrigate plaintiff’s land is not stated in the complaint, nor is the quantity which the defendant did deliver stated, nor is the difference capable of being computed. It is nowhere stated in the contract on what land, or where, the water should be delivered by defendant.
The general demurrer should have been sustained. Reversed, and new trial ordered, with directions to the court below to sustain the demurrer to the amended complaint.
Bethune, J., and Rouse, J., concur.