136 Ga. 428 | Ga. | 1911
(After stating the foregoing facts.)
“To sustain a bill against the charge of multifariousness, it is not indispensable that all the parties should have an interest in all the matters contained in the suit. It is sufficient, if each party has an interest in some matter in the suit, which is common to all, and they are connected with others.” Worthy v. Johnson, 8 Ga. 236 (52 Am. D. 399). “Where-the plaintiffs have a common interest against all of the defendants in a suit as to one or more of the questions raised by it, so as to make them all necessary parties for the purpose of enforcing that common interest, the circumstance of some of the defendants being subject to distinct liabilities in respect to different branches of the subject-matter will not render the bill multifarious.” City Bank of Macon v. Bartlett, 71 Ga. 198. “Where all the complainants belonged to the same class and had a common interest, and all the defendants belonged to one class and were subject to a common liability, it does not matter that the extent of the rights of each of the complainants, or the liability of each of the defendants, may not be the same.” Ib. A petition is not multifarious though it concerns things of different natures against several defendants, whose rights are distinct, if it sets forth one connected interest among them all, centering in the point
Having set forth the real testamentary scheme of the will, does
Moreover, as we have seen, the scheme of the will was that the entire estate should be kept together by the executor for the term of three years before the division thereof, as provided in the will, should be made, and in the meantime the debts of the testator, as well as the money to be paid to his widow and the expenses- of maintenance and education of the plaintiffs, should all be paid from
It was proper to have the alleged pro rata liability of each of the defendant devisees of the Dennis place and the defendants holding under them determined in one action. See Chamblee v. Atlanta Brewing & Ice Co., 131 Ga. 554 (62 S. E. 1032). As was well said by Mr. Justice Warner in the case of Nail v. Mobley, 9 Ga. 278, “It is the interest of parties, as well as the interest of the public, that all matters in controversy between them should be settled in one suit, when it can be done with safety and without great practical inconvenience.”
We have decided the only points necessary to dispose of the question as to whether or not the petition was multifarious, and with -confidence have arrived at the conclusion that it was not; and therefore the judgment of the lower court must be
Reversed.