Cumberland Coal & Iron Co. v. Jeffries

Goldsborough, J., delivered the opinion of this Court: The principal question for this Court to decide in the above case, arises on a motion to dismiss the appeal, upon the ground, that it is prayed and brought up at the instance and on the prayer of one only of the four joint defendants. It appears from the record that the appellee instituted an action of trespass quare clausum fregit, charging the appellant, together with the three other defendants named in the appellee’s declaration, with entering certain lands called the “Anderson Farm,” of which the appellee claims he was in the lawful possession at the time of the alleged trespass. The defendants pleaded separately. Upon the trial, the jury rendered a joint verdict against all of the defendants.

Judgment was entered upon this verdict, and from this judgment the appeal was taken by the appellant alone,. The question involved in this motion, has, in our opinion, been expressly decided in Lovejoy vs. Irelan, 17 Md. Rep., 526 . This Court in that case say, “there is no doubt that in a case at common law a writ of error brought by one of several defendants, could not be maintained.” The above was a case in equity, and the principal difficulty with the Court was, in applying a well established rule of law to a case in equity, and it was only by assimilating that case to a case at law that the appeal was dismissed. Since that decision, however, the law has been modified by an Act of Assembly in cases in equity, so that, in such cases, the question cannot again arise.

This view in cases at law, is fully sustained by Tidd’s Pr., 1189, 1226, and by the cases referred to by the learned judge who delivered the opinion in Lovejoy vs. Irelan. See also the case of Williams vs. Bank of U. S., 11 Whea ³⁸² ton’s Rep., 415. This was a case at common law, in