Louthood v. Town of Cambridge
Louthood v. Town of Cambridge
Opinion of the Court
The plaintiff seeks to recover for alleged injuries caused by the insufficiency or want of repair of a bridge which the defendant town is liable to keep in repair. The amended complaint is challenged by demurrer, specifying as the reason that the notice given to the selectmen of the town, as set forth in the complaint, does not state the time of the occurrence of such injuries. The demurrer was overruled and the complaint adjudged sufficient. To this ruling an exception was allowed, and the cause passed to this Court before final judgment.
Plaintiff argues, in effect, that since the notice is dated July 3, 1919, one would understand the phrase therein, “at about ten o’clock on Sunday night, June 15th,” to mean June 15, 1919,
• [2, 3] Allegations of the notice given were unnecessary to the complaint (Kent v. Lincoln, 32 Vt. 591; Herrick v. Holland, 83 Vt. 502, 77 Atl. 6); yet, since such allegations, though surplusage, show the notice to have been so defective that the plaintiff had no cause of action, the complaint is bad on demurrer. Com. Dig. Pleader, c. 29. Mr. Tidd, speaking of the rules of pleading governing the statement of the cause of action, says ‘ ‘ surplusage will not vitiate, except where it defeats the action. ’’ 1 Tidd’s Pr. *451. And Mr. Chitty says: “It is a material part of the rule respecting surplus allegations, that if the party introducing them show, on the face of his own pleading, that he has no cause of action, his pleading will be defective.” 1 Chit. PI. *231. In such case “the superfluous matter cannot be rejected as immaterial; since it shows that the pleader has, according to his own statement, no cause of action, or no defence.” Gould’s Pl. Ch. Ill, § 171.
Since the failure to give a notice answering the requirements of the statute, is fatal to the plaintiff’s right of recovery, final judgment wall follow.
Judgment reversed, demurrer sustained, complaint adjudged insufficient, and judgment for defendant to recover its costs.
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting. I am unable to agree with my associates that the notice in this case is insufficient. It is treated by the parties, as well as by the majority of the Court, with whom, in this regard, I agree, as a part of the complaint that could be reached by a demurrer, though unnecessarily alleged. As an allegation in pleading, it is in substance as follows: On July 3, 1919, the plaintiff notified the defendant that about ten o’clock on Sunday night, June 15, she received the injury of which she complains, etc. Thus construed, the year being expressed in the independent clause of the sentence, it is obviously understood in the subordinate clause of that same sentence that the facts therein stated occurred in the same year as that already stated in the same sentence. The rule stated in Royce v. Maloney, 58 Vt. 437, 5 Atl. 395, and Parker v. Burgess, 64 Vt. 442, 24 Atl. 743, may well apply in this case. There it is said that “when several facts are stated in one continuous sentence, or in several sentences connected by the conjunction ‘and’, time, though alleged but once, applies to every fact.” Though the clauses in this case are not connected by the conjunction “and”, they are, however, connected by the conjunction “that”, which makes a closer connection between the clauses here than was made by. the conjunction “and” in the cases above cited.
There is another reason why I cannot agree with my associates that the notice of the time when the accident happened is insufficient. This Court has said in Law v. Fairfield, 46 Vt. 425, that the purpose of the statute in requiring written notice to be given by the injured party to the defendant town, stating the time and place of the injury, was to “reasonably inform the town of the locality in which the insufficient highway causing the injury existed, so that the officers of the town, immediately after the injury, and before the surface of the highway had materially changed, might examine the place causing the injury and judge of the sufficiency or insufficiency of the highway at that point, and thus be prepared to resist or yield to the claim of the injured party.” That case is cited approvingly in Babcock et ux. v. Guilford, 47 Vt. 519. Thus the test is: Did the plaintiff give reasonable notice to the defendant of the time when the injury was received ? As has been stated above, she gave the day of the month and the month of the year. It was Sunday, June 15th. The selectmen of the defendant must have known when they received the notice of the injury on July 3, 1919, that Sun
The majority turn the ease upon White v. Stowe, 54 Vt. 510. The notice in that case bears no resemblance to the one in this case. In that case the notice was as follows: ‘ ‘ Stowe, Aug. 21, 1874. To the selectmen of Stowe. I enter complaint for the roads not being what they should be. My wife stepped into a hole in a culvert near the Chas. Hanks place, or where R. W. Demeritt lives, July 22d, and hurt her left limb and back.” That that notice was insufficient no one can doubt. It contained nothing that the law required. It failed to state that the accident happened in the town of Stowe. As stated by the Court, in disposing of the case, it contained nothing respecting the manner in which the highways were defective, and made no reference to the road about which the complaint was made. Besides the decision did not turn alone upon the failure to state the time sufficiently certain. That was only one of the reasons stated for holding the notice insufficient. The Court say: ‘ ‘ The date given might as well refer to some previous year as the year in which
Stress is placed upon the fact that the time of the accident stated in the notice could have been made more definite if the year had been stated, and hence the notice is defective. Assuming that, if the year had been stated, the notice would have been more definite, which I do not concede, it does not follow that the notice is so indefinite as to defeat the plaintiff’s right to recover. In Willey v. Berlin, cited in Ranney v. Sheffield, 49 Vt. 191, not otherwise reported, the Court held the notice sufficient where it specified the road and then the place of injury on the road, as being below Albert Warren’s in the town of Berlin. The proof on the trial showed that there was considerable space of road below Warren’s in Berlin that would be included in the place named in the notice, and that there were several other objects as prominent as Warren’s nearer than his place to the point of injury so that- the plaintiff could have been more specific than he was; and yet the Court held the notice sufficient and the plaintiff entitled to recover under it. That case was cited approvingly by the Court in the Ranney Case. It is not enough to defeat the plaintiff’s right to recover, that the notice could have been made more specific. If it reasonably informed the defendant of the time the accident happened, that was enough. It was not the intent of the Legislature in the passage of this act requiring notice to be given of the time of the accident, to make it unreasonably difficult for a person injured through the negligence of a town to make out his case. It was passed to prevent an undue advantage being taken of the town, and to place the defendant and plaintiff on an equal footing as to their rights. If the selectmen reasonably understood what the notice meant, they had no right to sit back upon the technicality in the omission of a single word that is fairly inferable from what precedes the omission. I would affirm the judgment below.
Reference
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- E. Janette Louthood v. Town of Cambridge
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