19 Pa. Super. 476 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1902
Opinion by
Twenty-seven actions of assumpsit were brought, by as many legal plaintiffs but all to the use of the Blubaker Coal Company, .against the defendants befope a -justice of the peace of Centre county. The justice entered judgment in each of the cases against the defendants, who appealed to the court of common pleas. The legal plaintiff in each of the appeals was a different individual, but the Blubaker Coal Company was the equitable plaintiff in all of the cases, which all presented the same questions. By an agreement between the parties, with the approval of the court, all the appeals were consolidated and tried in the court below as one action. At the trial in the common pleas the only evidence offered by the plaintiff which would have warranted the submission of the question of the liability of either of the defendants to any one of the legal plaintiffs, for any amount whatever, was the docket of Anthony Anna, a justice of the peace of Cambria county. That docket showed that each one of the twenty-seven present legal plaintiffs had brought an action for wages against the Benton Coal Company before the justice of the peace in Cambria pou-nty, and that judgments had been entered against the defendant in said actions in amounts which corresponded; respectively, with the amounts of the several judgments entered by the justice of the peace in Centre county in the subsequent actions in which the appeals, here consolidated, had been taken. It was proved that all pf these Cambria county judgments had been assigned to the Blubaker Coal Company, and it was admitted that G. Murray Andrews was a stockholder in the Benton Coal Company to ap amount in excess pf the aggregate .pf these claims. The defendants having made an offer of evidence which was rejected, introduced no testimony. The learned judge of the court below instructed the jury to find a verdict ip favor of the plaintiffs in the sum of $1,870.08, formally reserving the questions of law raised by two points presented on behalf of the defendants. The points reserved were: “ 1. There is np jurisdiction in the justice of the peace in these cases nor in the common pleas on appeal, and the verdict must be for the defendants and the jury is instructed so to find.” “ 5. Under all the evidence the plaintiff cannot recover aud the yer-dict must be for the defendant,”
The judgment is affirmed.