Ritterbusch v. City of Pittsburg

RICHARDS, J.

This action was commenced by the plaintiff Conradine Ritterbusch and her two children on February 23, 1921, against the defendant, City of Pittsburg, a municipal corporation of the sixth class, to recover damages for the death of Carl D. E. Ritterbusch, husband and father respectively of the plaintiffs, alleged to have been caused through typhoid fever contracted by reason of the negligence of the said defendant in permitting its municipal water supply furnished to the inhabitants of said city to become impure, unwholesome, unpotable, polluted, and dangerous to the health of its inhabitants drinking and using said water. On the date of the commencement of said action twenty other separate actions were commenced against the same defendant, based upon the same statement of facts and differing only in the elements of damage and amount of recovery. The defendant, upon being duly served, moved in each of said actions to have the same transferred to another county for trial, and upon stipulation of the parties plaintiff each and all of said actions were transferred for trial to the county of San Joaquin, and on the 24th day of October, 1922, were called for trial in the superior court in and for said county before the court sitting without a jury; whereupon it was further stipulated that each of said eases should be separately tried but that all testimony introduced

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in any one of the trials should be considered as having been introduced in all of them so far as the same might be applicable to each case, and subject to all legal objections that might be urged against such testimony had it been originally offered in the particular case. Nineteen of said cases were then tried successively. At the conclusion of the plaintiff’s testimony in each case the defendant made a motion for non-suit, which motion the court denied. At the conclusion of the trial each of said causes was submitted for decision and the court on April 30, 1923, filed its findings of fact and conclusions of law in each of said nineteen cases, and judgment was thereupon entered in favor of the plaintiffs and against the defendant in each of said cases. A motion for new trial in each being denied, the defendant appealed from the judgment in each and all of said nineteen eases and by stipulation of the parties and order of this court these nineteen appeals have been consolidated and are to be considered upon a single transcript and set of briefs. The main case to be considered upon these appeals is that of