Court Opinion

ID: 9833898
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 23:07:44.209323+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:44:08.748394
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
On September 21, 1906, a written lease contract was entered into by and between appellant and appellee, whereby a portion of a certain house was leased to appellant by appellee for the period of time from September 16, 1906, up to and including September 15, 1907, and it was provided therein that appellant should be entitled to have the lease extend for two years from. September 15, 1907, by giving written notice of his intention to renew and extend the lease 30 days prior to its expiration. On January 26, 1907, appellant and Dockery & Co. guaranteed to appellee the payment of the rent by J. D. Peters to whom the house had been sublet, with the consent of appellee. On September 26, 1907, by a memorandum indorsed on the lease contract, the lease was extended according to the terms and conditions therein set forth. The extension was signed by appellee, but was made at the solicitation of appellant, and he recognized it by paying the rent for quite a time. Ap-pellee knew at the time that he gave the extension to appellant that the latter had made arrangements to sell his furniture, then in the house, to Mrs. Fuller, and intended to sublet to her, but looked to appellant for the rent. When she left the premises, she was in arrears in the rent in the sum of at least $50, and appellant paid it. No one else was ever in charge of the premises with the knowledge or consent of appellee, and all the payments of rent that were made up to December 23, 1908, were made by appellant. During the latter part of 1907 and 1908 he paid $1,640 on the rent. He did not at any time deny that he was liable for the rents.
The lease from Momsen to appellant was of the same purport as the one between appellant and appellee, and the extension by appellee, as agent of Momsen, was the same as on the other lease. Appellant sold the furniture in the house to Mrs. Porter on September 1, 1908, and she testified that she paid the rent to appellant for the use of the house. She also testified that the place was not rented to her by appellee, but that “Mr. Dockery sold me the Metropole rooming house and the other rooming house,” meaning, of course, that he leased the rooming houses to' her. Appellant held possession of the premises by virtue of the extension, paid the rent for over a year, and he is bound by the extension although he did not sign it.
The decision In Bullis v. Presidio Mining Co., 75 Tex. 540, 12 S. W. 397, sustains this court. In that case it is clearly held that a *596contract involving land can tie extended by a verbal agreement. Tbe court said: “We feel compelled to treat the second contract as a distinct and independent one, and not a mere agreement for the extension of the time of performance of the first one. So treated, we think it was clearly within the statute of frauds, and appellant not having signed it was not bound by it.” Appellant and appellee acted upon the extension given by appellee for over a year, and appellant paid rent and recognized the vitality of the lease contract during that time, and he cannot now set up the statute of frauds to defeat the contract. The evidence of appellant showed that he recognized the existence of the extension contract, and his actions in collecting the rent from the two women tenants, and then paying it to appellee, can be accounted for on no other reasonable hypothesis than that of his tenancy. He kept books which showed that the account for rents was carried under the name of “Met-ropole,” and there were current entries made of the revenue from the Metropole and disbursements on account of the Metropole. Appellant paid the water and gas and electric light bills for the rooming house while Mrs. Fuller and Mrs. Porter were there. It is stated in Page on Contracts, § 733: “If a contract is a contract for some interest in realty and also one which cannot be performed within the year, as a contract for a lease for more than, one year, the courts are divided as to whether part performance can take it out of the statute. Some courts hold that part performance takes such contract out of the statute; and others that it does not.” The authorities cited in support of the text are two from Alabama and three from Iowa, the first supporting the theory that part performance takes the lease for more than a year out of the scope of the. statute of frauds, while, under the peculiar statute of Iowa, the Supreme Court of that state bolds a contrary doctrine. There is really no conflict, however, in the decisions as they are shaped by the statutes of the respective states. Eubank v. May Hardware Co., 105 Ala. 629, 17 South. 109; Dahm v. Barlow, 93 Ala. 120, 9 South. 593; Thorp v. Bradley, 75 Iowa, 50, 39 N. W. 177; Burden v. Knight, 82 Iowa, 581, 48 N. W. 985; Powell v. Crampton, 102 Iowa, 304, 71 N. W. 570.
In the first case cited — Eubank v. May Hardware Co. — the Supreme Court of Alabama said: “If the plaintiffs made a parol contract with the defendant corporation by which they rented to the defendant their storehouse for a term, commencing the 10th of February, 1890, and ending the 1st of October, 1894, at $75 per month, and under this contract the defendant entered into possession and kept it until the 1st day of October, 1892, paying until that time the monthly installments of rent, and then abandoned the possession and léase of its own accord, and without the consent or fault of the plaintiffs, the contract does not fall within the influence of the statute of frauds, and is as binding on the parties as if it had been in writing.” In that ease there was no extension of the lease period in writing, but an oral agreement between the lessor and a third person that the latter should have the same terms as the original lessee, as expressed in the written contract. The court said: “The terms of a contract already entered into between either of the parties to one proposed to be presently made and a third person may be adopted by the parties by reference merely, if the terms of such former contract are well understood between them, and, when thus adopted, will be as binding as if fully set out in the latter contract.” It is true that the Alabama decisions were rendered under a statute which excepted from its nullifying influence oral sales and leases of lands when “the purchase money, or a portion thereof, is paid, and the purchaser put in possession of the land”; and in the statute of this state there is no such provision, but it has been held time and again that oral sales of land will be upheld where the vendee has made payments and has entered into possession of the land and made valuable improvements thereon, and this under a subdivision of the statute of frauds, which requires a memorandum in writing upon any contract for sale of land. That subdivision is as follows: “Upon any contract for the sale of real estate or the lease thereof for a longer term than one year.” If part performance removes a sale from the influence of the statute, no valid reason can be given for holding that part performance would not remove a lease for more than a year from the influence of the statute.
We have discussed the statute of frauds, as applied to this case, as though it was an oral contract on which the action was based, but it is not. The original contracts were in writing signed by the parties thereto, and in those contracts were provisions permitting a renewal of the leases for two years by a notice on the part of the lessee. Appellant testified that the notice was given, and that renewed the contract in writing, as much so as though a new contract had been executed. The lessee had the right to a renewal, by giving written notice to the lessor, 30 days prior to the expiration of the lease. The lessor had the right to waive the written notice, and the lease was renewed under the terms of the original contract, without any further writing. House v. Burr, 24 Barb. (N. Y.) 525. This proposition is unanswerable when a renewal in writing has been entered upon the back of the contracts and signed by the lessor. Appellant alleges that a renewal was made by appellee, but to Mrs. Fuller, instead of him, This was denied by appellee, who testified that he had no dealings with Mrs. Fuller, *597and that copies of the renewals signed by her were so signed without his knowledge or consent. In the case of Noland v. Cincinnati Cooperage Co., 82 S. W. 627, a lease contract for 10 years was signed by the lessors, but not by the lessee, but it entered upon the premises, and began to use them and paid $50, a cash payment referred to in the lease. The Court of Appeals of Kentucky said: “It is insisted for appellee that no action can be maintained against it on the contract, because it did not sign the lease and the contract is not one to be performed in one year from its making. But appellee accepted the lease, and, after taking possession of the property under it, it will not be permitted to keep the property and avoid the payment of the contract price.” Also, in the case of Belcher v. Schmidt, 132 S. W. 833, the Court of Civil Appeals of the Second Supreme Judicial District held: “The contention presented by one of the special exceptions was that the contract alleged, being in parol, could not be enforced because in contravention of the statute of frauds. Accepting the allegations in the petition as true, plaintiff had transferred the lease to the defendant, delivered possession of the land, and had rendered all .the services which he had agreed to perform. Defendant had accepted the lease, had gone into possession of the land, and had used it. If, in any event, it could be said that the agreement when first made came within the purview of our statute of frauds (Sayles’ Ann. Civ. St. 1897, art. 2543), that statute had no application after plaintiff had fully performed the obligations imposed upon him by the terms of the contract, and defendants had accepted the benefits of such performance.”
The motion for rehearing is overruled.