9 Ga. App. 733 | Ga. Ct. App. | 1911
(After stating the foregoing facts.)
The questions of law raised by the facts in this case seem never to have been distinctly decided by our Supreme Court, but the principle involved has been before the court on several occasions, and we think is embraced in § 4389 of the Civil Code of 1910, which declares that, “If a contract be entire, but one suit can be maintained for a breach thereof; but if it be severable, or if the breaches occur at successive periods in an entire contract (as where money is to be paid by instalments), an action will lie for each breach; but all the breaches occurring up to the commencement of the action must be included therein.” It is true that this section relates by its terms to breaches of a contract. But in the case of Floyd v. Cox, 72 Ga. 147, the Supreme Court construed a running-account, continuing through several consecutive years, where it was added up at the end of each year, the credits subtracted, and the balance carried forward to the next year, as one entire claim, — “one account and one indebtedness.” In Thompson v. McDonald. 84 Ga. 5 (10 S. E. 448), it was held that “an account resulting from a single contract can not be split into two causes of action, the whole being mature when the first action was brought.” That was a suit on an account for sawing lumber. Certain of the items of the account had been included in a former suit, but, on the trial of the former suit, were stricken from the bill of particulars. The Supreme Court held that there could be no recovery in the second suit, because when the first suit -was brought, the items now sued
The whole question resolves itself into this: Was the general running account against the defendant a divisible demand, which could be separated at the will of the plaintiff and collected by several actions ? If the running account was an entire and indivisible demand, the judgment in the suit for the account due in 1906 was a good plea in bar to the account for 1905; for, at the time of this second suit for 1905, all the items of the account were matured and past due. The case of Parris v. Hightower, 76 Ga. 631, is relied upon by plaintiff in error. In that case, however, it seems that there was an express agreement that the account for goods sold on the same day should be divided into four distinct parts due on different dates, and, in view of this agreement, the Supreme Court held that the plaintiff had the option to bring separate suits on each portion of the account, or to unite them. In a well-considered case by the Supreme Court of Iowa (Williams-Abbott Electric Co. v. Model Electric Co., 134 Iowa, 665) it was held that “the sale of goods, although at different times and upon different orders, payment for all of which has matured, constitutes but a single demand, and separate suits based upon each distinct order and sale can not be maintained, although in itself a complete transaction; and a recovery upon one such order and sale is a bar to an action upon the other sales then due.” And in speaking for the court the learned Chief Justice says (p. 668) :. “The proposition that a continuous book account is entire, and can not without agreement of the parties be split into separate and distinct demands to form a basis for several suits, is one'which has general recognition by the
It is therefore clear to our minds that the plaintiff should not have been permitted to divide this account into two parts for the purpose of obtaining jurisdiction in the justice’s court, but the suit should have been relegated to the court having jurisdiction of the entire amount. This would not have deprived him of the right of asserting any part of his claim, but would simply have compelled him to assert his entire claim in one suit. The proper place to make this question was the place where it was raised — in the superior court — when the first case in which a judgment was rendered was tried. Then and there the plaintiff’s right to split his account into two parts was directly challenged; and, in our opinion, it being conceded that there was but this one .account, this plea should have been sustained; but, through an erroneous view of the law, this plea was decided against the defendant’s contention, and judgment was entered up against him accordingly. He submitted to this judgment, and the cuestión was therefore res adjudicata so
Judgment reversed.