Case ID: scl_15/html/0020-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "JohNsoN, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Octavius Crips, and others, vs. Andrew Talvande.
    Where the Tenant holds over his term, and the Landlord recovers double rent under the act of 1808, he cannot bring case af-terwards against the Tenant for holding over, whereby he lost the sale of the premises. Quere 1 If the Plaintiffs under any circumstances could recover for such remote consequential damages 1
    
    To determine whether causes of action are the same, the samo evidence must be necessary to support them.
    Where a party has been injured he cannot bring suit for one part and another suit for another part. If the cause of action is entire, but one suit can be brought.
    This was an action on the case tried at Charleston, May Term, 1825, before Mr. Justic Huger. The Plaintiffs had leased a House and Lot to the Defendant, who held over after the term of his lease had expired. The Plaintiffs commenced a suit under the act of 1808, for double rent for the time held over, and recovered. This action was brought to recover special damages, on the ground that the Plaintiffs had agreed to sell the premises to one Ball, who had withdrawn from the contract in consequence of the Defendants holding over, Ball not being able to get possession within the time specified. The premises had been sold for less than Ball offered; no otl> er person being willing to give as much. The Jury found a verdict for the. Plaintiffs, with a memorandum stating that it was made up by deducting the former verdict for double rent from the amount of damages. The, Defendant appealed. .
    
      Qrimke for the Defendant.
    The act of 1808 allows the Landlord to recover double rent, when the Tenant holds over, and prescribes the remedy. This remedy has been resorted to, and admitting that trespass or case would lay, they áre taken away by the .election to pursue that remedy. 4 Burr 2225; 1 L. Raymond 692; Cro. Jac. 73 ; Yelverton 63; 4 Mass. 433; 4 Johns. 119; 1 Bay 214 j 1 Wm. Black. Rep. 273, 387; 3 Burr 1845.
    Toomer, and Petigru Atty. Gen. contra.
    If the evidence in the two suits is not the same, then the former suit is no bar to this. That is the test. The remedy given by the act of 1808 is intended to cover only the value of the use and occupation; so that consequential damages could not be recovered in that suit, and therefore this ..suit is brought. 5 Burr 2694; 7 Johnson Rep. 20; 1 New Rep. 174; 8 John. R. 383; 9 East. 436. No notice to quit was necessary in this suit, as in the other. .
    As to the damages: If one suífer a loss by the act of another, whether voluntary or not, he is answerable.. — • The loss here was clearly proved. Com. Dig. 288; 1 Domat 390; 1 Mass. Rep. 145.
    
      Hunt in reply.
   Cuma per

JohNsoN, J.

The authorities cited at the bar by the Counsel opposed to the motion, folly establish the position, that the true test by which to determine whether the causes of action are the same, is to enquire whether the same evidence will be necessary to support them. When a tenant holds over after the expiration of the lease, the act of 1808 subjects him to the payment of double rent, and gives the Landlord a remedy by action or by distress. To this remedy the Plaintiffs have resorted, and have had their redress ; and the question now is, whether the injury complained of in this action is the same. In the application of the rule, it has been contended that in that action all that was necessary to be proved was that the Defendant was the Tenant of Plaintiff, that he had notice to quit, and that he held over; that in this case, proof of notice to quit might be dispensed with, and that to sustain it, proof of the contract to sell to Ball, the knowledge of the defendant, and the loss on the sale were necessary; and hence it is concluded that the causes of action are not the same. This is clearly a misapplication of the rule. The act of the Defendant, and for which the Plaintiffs seek redress, is the same in both cases ; the fact of holding over after the expiration of the lease. And the rule must be understood as applying only to the act done by the defendant, and not to the damages which the Plaintiff has sustained. It is the wrong done, and not the character or quantum of damages which constitutes the identity. The wrongs complained of in these two cases are identified by another circumstance too striking to be omitted. The Jury have endorsed on the back of the record a memorandum from which it appears that after estimating the damages claimed by the Plaintiff in this action, they have deducted $1850, the amount of the former verdict, and found the^alance for the Plaintiff. The admission that the damages claimed have been sustained and were recoverable, gives rise incidentally to another question, and that is, whether the plaintiff can resort to a second action when a recovery of a part of the damages only has been had in the former action. The rule on this subject is also well settled. When the cause of action is entire, or in other words, when the act complained of is indivisible, a Plaintiff cannot separate it and bring one action for one part, and another for another; the first will be a bar to th)p second, as in the case of Bond vs. Quat-tlebaum, 2 Nott & M’Cord 205, where the Court held that a former recovery in Trover was a bar to another action for a part of the same property. See also 15 Johnson Rep. 229; 16 do. 136. From this view of the case, it is impossible that the Plaintiff can recover, and leave is therefore given to the Defendant to enter up Judgment as in the case of nonsuit. The Court do not by their silence in relation to the fourth ground intend to give currency to the opinion that the damages claimed in this case are in their nature such as the Plaintiff would be entitled to recover in any form of action — the Court gives no opinion on that point. My own impressions however are that they are not recoverable. The rule on this subject I take to be this : that the damages to which the Plaintiff is entitled are those which proceed immediately and necessarily, as contradistinguished from remote, and contingent, from the wrong done. The wrong done in this case was the Defendant’s holding over. The damages immediately and necessarily resulting from it, consists in the loss of the use and occupation, and other matters immediately incident to and connected with this right. But here the Plaintiff claims to superadd to them a supposed loss in consequence of Ball’s declining to purchase, and which, if he was not bound, he might or might not have carried into effect, and a few more additions founded on such speculations would multiply the damages to an incalculable extent, and appeared to me to be too remote to be the foundation of an action.

Motion granted.