20 A.2d 616 | Conn. | 1941
The complaint in this action alleged that the plaintiff and defendant were owners in common of a certain piece of land in New London and that the defendant had received large sums as rentals from the land, for which he had failed to account to the plaintiff; and it prayed an account and judgment for the amount found due. The answer admitted the ownership of the land in common but alleged that the defendant had fully accounted. An interlocutory judgment for an accounting was rendered, in which an auditor was appointed. While his report is not as complete a statement of the facts as would be desirable, the following situation is fairly apparent: The defendant bought the property for the joint account of the parties and conveyed an undivided one-half interest to the plaintiff; the property was involved in a partnership enterprise conducted by them; and the defendant received the rents from and paid all expenses pertaining to the property and generally handled the moneys of the partnership. The auditor, in taking the account, reviewed the entire partnership dealings with reference to the land and that is the basis of the account stated in his report. He found that the plaintiff was entitled to recover a substantial sum from the defendant. The latter remonstrated against the acceptance of the report upon the ground that, as the complaint claimed only an accounting of the rents received from the property and the report was a general and complete account of all transactions between the parties relating to it, the report went beyond the issues made by the pleadings. The trial court overruled the remonstrance and entered judgment upon the report. From this judgment the defendant has appealed.
In an action of account, as in any other, the judgment cannot ordinarily rest upon the determination of issues not fairly within those raised by the pleadings. *123
Buckley v. Kelly,
The ultimate basis upon which rests the principle that a judgment must ordinarily be restricted to issues reasonably within the scope of the pleadings is that, as to other issues, the adversary party has never been properly brought before the court and hence the court lacks jurisdiction to determine them. Reynolds v. Stockton,
There is no error.
In this opinion the other judges concurred.