4 Ga. App. 159 | Ga. Ct. App. | 1908
(After stating the foregoing facts.)
So far as the payment of costs is concerned, every infant is always, theoretically at least, in a state of inability; for all his moneys, etc., are, or should be, in the hands of his legal guardian. No court can, by execution or otherwise, compel an infant to pay costs; nor should a court allow him voluntarily to pay them, for this would be an expenditure from his estate that should be sanctioned only bv that court or officer which has cognizance of his financial affairs. The court, therefore, looks to the next friend or guardian ad litem for the costs. As to this incident of the case die is the parlv, the person against whom the judgment immediately goes; and the infant is not. The infant’s estate is ultimately responsible for the costs if the expenditure is bona fide and for the infant’s apparent good. The court having his estate under its jurisdiction may, therefore, upon proper application, direct the legal guardian or other trustee having possession of the funds to pay the costs to the next friend or guardian ad litem, or to the officers of the court, if they have not been paid. If the court in which the- suit is filed appoints or accepts a next friend who on account of poverty is unable to pay the costs, this court will not, for his failure to
The great wrong so usually resulting from the -employment of young children in manufacturing enterprises, the frequency with which their natural indiscretions lead them into doing harm to themselves or 'to coemployees in such places, the great danger almost always incident to such surroundings, made the putting of those of tender years at such labor so universally a matter of wrong that even prior to 1906 the juries of this State were often called upon to declare, under the general rules of law, that such employments, in the specific cases before them, were negligent; though the question of negligence was issuable in every case. Compare Beck v. Standard Cotton Mills, 1 Ga. App. 278 (57 S. E. 998). In 1906 the legislature, recognizing the universality of the wrong, precluded all inquiry as to the existence of negligence when children were employed below certain ages, by passing the statute forbidding such employments. One of the objects of the statute was to prevent the exposure of children under the designated age, and of employees whq otherwise would be called upon to work with such children, to the dangers incident to the presence of these immature and indiscreet persons in such places; and therefore, when a child under the age prescribed is hurt by reason of being so unlawfully employed, or a coemployee is hurt because of some negligent or indiscreet act of such a child, as to the child in the one case and as to the coemployee in the other, the consequence contemplated by the statute having ensiied to one of the persons for whose benefit it was enacted, it is justly said that, as to such a cause of action in favor of such a plaintiff, the violation of the law is in its fullest sense negligence per se. Despite a few sporadic opinions to the contrary, this is now the rule almost universally recognized. Beck v. Standard Cotton Mills, supra; American Car Co. v. Armentraut, 214 Ill. 509 (73 N. E. 766); Queen v. Dayton Co., 95 Tenn. 458 (32 S. W. 460, 30 L. R. A. 82); Perry v. Tozer, 90 Minn. 431 (101 Am. St. Rep. 416, 97 N. W. 137); Leathers v. Tobacco Co., 144 N.
Some of the allegations- of the petition are not sufficiently full and definite to withstand the special demurrers which were also filed; and as the trial judge has not yet passed judgment as to them, it will now be in order for him to take them up and to require the petition to be perfected by amendment. We think that this court has already made sufficiently plain the degree of definiteness required in such suits, by the opinions in the cases of Cedartown Cotton Co. v. Miles, 2 Ga. App. 79 (58 S. E. 289); Southern States Cement Co. v. Helms, 2 Ga. App. 308 (58 S. E. 524); Jarrell v. American Pipe Bending Co., 2 Ga. App. 764 (59 S. E. 186).
Judgment reversed.