Court Opinion

ID: 7814227
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-07 17:29:28.525692+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:30:33.594091
License: Public Domain

George Bose Smith, J., dissenting. The various matters alluded to in the final paragraph of the majority opinion, such as laches, estoppel, etc., have all been eliminated by the parties ’ stipulations. These litigants have agreed to the penny upon every item of income and every item of expense. The only questions submitted to the trial court, and the only ones now before us, relate to the apportionment of the rent and to the appellees’ right to compensation for Mrs. Bhoton’s services. I think the chancellor was in error in his division of the rents. It is stipulated that the total rent from these furnished apartments was $29,611.52. The chancellor allocated only $8,250.00 of this amount to the buildings, with the remaining $21,361.52 being attributed to the presence of the furniture. This is the “seeming discrepancy” which the majority decline to correct. The chancellor based his conclusion upon the opinion of expert witnesses, who testified that apartments of this kind would be hard to rent as unfurnished units. These witnesses submitted detailed calculations to show that had the property been rented without furniture the total income would have been slightly less than the figure selected by the chancellor. One of them, upon cross-examination, conceded that if the rents were to be divided equitably an allocation of $7,500 to the building and $22,000 to the furniture would be “utterly absurd.” Yet that is the division now being approved. Even though the testimony of these witnesses be accepted as correct, the theory of their calculations cannot fairly be applied to this case. It is shown that both the apartments and the furniture were of low quality, the furniture being worth only about $500 at the time of the trial. Any attempt to speculate upon what the apartments would have rented for without the furniture is just as irrelevant as a converse attempt to determine what the furniture would have rented for without the apartments. Either approach is like saying that the last straw alone is responsible for breaking the camel’s back. The case before us involves an agreed amount of rent that is attributable both to the buildings and to the furniture. If we lay aside the artificial theory advanced by the appellees ’ expert witnesses, the evidence shows clearly enough that about a fifth of the rents should be credited to the appellees as a return upon the furniture. I would modify the decree to that extent.