11 Ga. App. 203 | Ga. Ct. App. | 1912
Lead Opinion
The certiorari was overruled. It appears from the pcti+ion, which'is verified by the magistrate’s answer, that the defendant, a corporation, was sued in a justice’s court, upon an open account. It filed a plea, denying indebtedness, and this plea was verified by the oath of J. P. Allen, who swore that he was authorized to file the plea and was familiar with the facts therein stated. The judgment of the magistrate was in favor of the plaintiff. The defendant entered an appeal to a jury in the justice’s court. The appeal and bond were signed, “ J. P. Allen & Co., per J. P. Allen, Secretary.” When the case was called for trial on the appeal, a motion was made to dismiss the appeal, upon the ground that the appeal and bond had not been executed by an authorized officer of the corporation. The justice postponed decision on this motion and allowed the- defendant to file at the next term of the court a written ratification of the act of J. P. Allen in entering the appeal, which ratification was duly executed by the corporation and under its seal. The motion to dismiss the appeal was overruled. The plaintiff announced ready, for trial, and a jury was stricken. The attorney for plaintiff testified that she %as absent in the city of New York, and he offered to prove her testimony delivered on a previous trial of the case. The court refused to permit this, and, the plaintiff offering no other evidence, the defendant was allowed to take a verdict.
2. Error is assigned upon the refusal of the justice of the peace to permit proof of the testimony of the plaintiff in a former
3. The only other point arises upon the contention that the justice should have dismissed the action or granted a nonsuit, and
Rehearing
ON MOTION FOR REHEARING.
Counsel for the plaintiff in error has filed a motion for rehearing, upon the ground that this court has misapprehended the scope and effect of the ruling of the Supreme Court in the case of King Hardware Co. v. Bowden, cited in the opinion. A decision of the Supreme Court is binding upon this court as a precedent only in so far as the ruling therein announced may have been authorized by the facts of the case under consideration. In the case cited, supra, it appears that the attorney for the King Hardware Company stated in his place that C. L. King, who signed the appeal bond,* was the agent of the King Hardware Company, managing the case. This was the only evidence before the court that King was the company’s agent managing the case, and the only question really presented to the Supreme Court for decision was whether this statement of counsel was sufficient to show that King had authority to enter the appeal in behalf of the King Hardware Company. We do not feel bound to extend the doctrine of that decision further than the facts of the case demand. It is true that in the opinion in that case it was said
The copy bond appearing in the record of the present case does not disclose that it was signed by the surety, but inasmuch as no point is made on this by the plaintiff in error, and no motion was made to dismiss the appeal for this reason, we assume that the omission of the name of the security was a clerical error in the copy, in view of the fact that the bond recites on its face that the appellant, J. 'P. Allen & Company, comes and tenders a named person as security. Of course it must appear in all cases that the appellant consented to the appeal. The present record discloses that Allen filed a defense for the corporation, verifying the truth thereof by his affidavit, and that afterwards the corporation filed in the justice’s court a document, under the seal of corporation,