188 Ga. 488 | Ga. | 1939
Howell and numerous other former employees sued Fulton Bag & Cotton Mills and two of its officers, for an accounting and recovery of their alleged respective shares of a benefit fund for sick employees, into which the employees of the mills had paid twenty-five cents a month from their salaries, which had been maintained by the mills corporation for more than twenty-five years before the passage of the social-security act in 1937, but which was then discontinued and distributed among existing employees. The defendants filed demurrers on numerous general and special grounds. The general demurrer was not passed upon. Amendments to the petition were filed, in response to special demurrers and rulings thereon. Paragraph 21 of the petition alleged: “Petitioners show that they were not employees of the Fulton Bag & Cotton
“3. Plaintiffs show that a record of the amount taken out of plaintiffs’ wages during their employment was kept by defendants; also a record was kept by defendants of the amount of money that was paid out as sick benefits to plaintiffs and other employees of the Fulton Bag & Cotton Mills.
'“4. Plaintiffs show that no records of the amount taken out of plaintiffs’ wages, nor the amounts paid out to plaintiffs as sick benefits, or payments, were kept by plaintiffs or any one other than defendants.
“5. Plaintiffs show that all these records and information are now in the possession and control of defendants; that plaintiffs intend to have these records present in court at the proper time and place; that defendants have kept plaintiffs’ money and also the records concerning the amount deducted and kept by them.”
In the same amendment the plaintiffs set forth an itemized statement, showing the exact dates when they began and ended their employment, and the exact amounts which they paid into the sick benefit fund. However, neither in this nor any amendment did they conform' to the ruling which required them to allege
1. (a) Where on demurrer to a petition an order is entered, requiring that the petition be amended by setting forth certain facts construed by the order to be material to the cause of action, and that in default of such amendment within a stated time the petition ’“stand dismissed,” such order is the law of the case, in the absence of timely exception and writ of error therefrom; and a dismissal of the action, automatically results, or a formal order of dismissal is proper, if the plaintiff fails to conform to its terms. Speer v. Alexander, 149 Ga. 765, 767 (102 S. E. 150); Smith v. Atlanta Gas-Light Co., 181 Ga. 479 (1, 2, 5) (182 S. E. 603); Clark v. Ganson, 144 Ga. 544 (87 S. E. 670), and cit.; Humphries v. Morris, 179 Ga. 55 (175 S. E. 242); Kumpe v. Hudgins, 39 Ga. App. 788 (149 S. E. 56), and cit.; Marbut v. So. Ry. Co., 22 Ga. App. 330, 332 (95 S. E. 1021).
(6) If it should be assumed that such an order, unexoepted to, will not be the' law of the case as to the vital materiality of the amendment with respect to a dismissal of the petition, and that upon this question a plaintiff who has failed to amend could be heard at the time a formal order of dismissal is taken, in the instant case the required amendment related to a matter which the defendants were entitled to; have pleaded; and upon the plaintiffs’ failure to comply with the order requiring them to furnish the
2. Assuming that after an order on special demurrer is passed, requiring a specific amendment of a petition or its dismissal upon failure so to amend within a stated time, it would suffice, to prevent a dismissal, merely to file an amendment stating good reasons for not setting forth the facts called for, in the absence of any proper exception to the order, the instant amendment was not thus sufficient, since it did not state any good reason for the non-compliance. The amended petition alleged that the plaintiffs had made stated contributions from their salaries to a sick-benefit fund, which they sought to recover. The order required them to state what they had received from such fund as sick benefits during their employment. The only reason assigned in their amendment for not stating these amounts was that the defendants had kept a “record” and the plaintiffs had not kept '■“records” of these payments; and it was in no wise alleged that the plaintiffs did not know, independently of “records,” what they thus received, so as to render it impossible for them to state these required facts.
3. For the foregoing reasons, the court did not err in entering an order formally dismissing the action on the special demurrer, after a non-compliance with the first order requiring the amendment stated.
Judgment affirmed.