Wills v. Andrews

Citations

• 73 Fla. 384
• 75 So. 618

Syllabus

<p>•Partnership Accounting Must Be in Equity-One Partner Has . No Right to Sue His Partner at Law Upon a Partnership ■ Transaction Until the Business Is Wound up and the Accounts Finally Settled. Practice When Suit Develops to Be in Wrong Forum.</p> <p>It is the settled rule here, as elsewhere, that an action at law by one partner against his co-partner will not lie on a claim growing out of the partnership transaction, until the business is wound up and the accounts finally settled. The remedy of the complaining partner in such cases is to be sought ordinarily in an equity court by bill for an accounting and settlement of the partnership affairs. Where it develops in the trial before a jury of a case at law that it was mistakenly instituted at law when it should have been in a court of equity, the proper practice, in response to a motion for an instructed verdict for the defendant based on the ground that the plaintiff’s suit was in the wrong forum, is to discharge the jury, and to dismiss the case without prejudice to the right of the plaintiff to apply for relief to the proper equity forum.</p>