Opinion
(October Term, 1792.)
An amendment will only be permitted, under the act of 1790, as to matters which might be demurred to.
ACTION of debt against defendant, naming him executor. Plea in abatement, that he is administrator and not executor. Plaintiff moved to amend upon the act of 1790, and cited Strange, 89, where, after issue joined, the Court permitted an amendment by laying the assumpsit to be made to the plaintiffs themselves instead of its being made to their testator. But the Court said the act of 1790 is but a repetition of the provisions before made by the acts of amendment and jeofail, and that by this act nothing could be amended but what the other (20) party might have demurred to and specially set down as the cause of his demurrer, which was not the case in the present instance. The amendment of writs, to make that maintainable which before the amendment was not so, might be productive of great hardship; for very possibly the reason of the bail entering into a bail bond was his knowledge that the action on the defective writ could not be supported, and then the amendment would entrap him.
Motion denied.
NOTE. — Our judges have expounded the act of 1790 with great liberality, saying, "Anything may be amended at any time." See McClure v. Burton. 4 N.C. 84; Davis v. Evans, ibid., 411; Williams v. Lee, 4 N.C. 578; Justice of Camden v. Sawyer, 9 N.C. 61; Boyt v. Cooper, 6 N.C. 286; Wilcox v. Hawkins, 10 N.C. 84.