114 Ga. 689 | Ga. | 1902
Four separate and distinct actions, each founded upon a promissory note, were brought by M. Ferst’s Sons & Company against Purvis and others. The defendants filed an answer in each case, and the plaintiffs filed a separate demurrer to each answer. The bill of exceptions recites that “ the demurrers filed by said plaintiffs to the pleas of the defendants, being exactly alike in each ease, were heard together, and were by tbe court sustained;
We are of the opinion that the motion to dismiss is well taken and should be sustained. It is settled by the decision in Wells v. Coker Banking Co., 113 Ga. 857, that a mere agreement to try several cases together does not amount to a consolidation of the cases into one, and that, under such circumstances, the losing party can not, by a single bill of exceptions, “bring to this court for review the judgments severally rendered in such cases in the court below.” In the opinion delivered in the case last cited, reference is made to the case of Erwin v. Ennis, 104 Ga. 861. There, three cases, without being consolidated, were submitted to the decision of the presiding judge without the intervention of a jury. Though he disposed- of them by a single order, it was nevertheless held that the losing party could not, by a single bill of exceptions, bring the three cases here for review. It does not, in the case now before us, affirmatively appear whether the “ ruling ” made by the judge in disposing of the several demurrers to the defendants’ answers was embodied in one order or several, but this makes no difference; for even if only a single order was passed, it should be treated as a judgment applying severally and seriatim to each of the four demurrers. It appears, then, that the parties to the four cases, though consenting that they be heard together, so far as concerned action upon the demurrers, chose to kedp the cases separate and not to consolidate them until after the demurrers had been disposed of. Then came the consolidation, and the verdict and judgment disposing of all the cases as one. It may be that the defendants would have had the right, by a singlé bill of exceptions, to complain of the final judgment; for it, in view of what occurred, related to a
Writ of error dismissed.