Court Opinion

ID: 9753794
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:29:44.302963+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:42.311634
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Me. Justice Robeets:
The error in the majority opinion, as I view this case, is the failure to give paragraph 16 of the lease its natural reading. In relevant part, that paragraph provides: “If rent and/or charges hereby reserved as rent shall remain unpaid on any day when the same *204ought to be paid Lessee hereby empowers any Prothonotary ... to appear for Lessee in any and all actions which may be brought for rent . . . and in said suits ... or actions to confess judgment against Lessee for all or any part of the rent specified in this lease and then unpaid including, at Lessor’s option, the rent for the entire unexpired balance of the term of this lease . . . and for interest and costs together with an attorney’s commission of 5%.” (Emphasis supplied) The lease further provides in paragraph 21 that all of the remedies given to lessor “shall be cumulative and concurrent.” Clearly, paragraph 16 allows the lessor to obtain judgment for rent for the balance of the term once the tenant defaults in any rent payment. Paragraphs 14(2) and 15(c) are alternative remedies and thus in no way affect the lessor’s power to enter judgment for the balance of the rental due; they do, as the court below properly recognized, have impact on the sum the landlord may recover. The evident purpose of paragraph 16 is to permit the landlord to obtain full protection for any claim he might have with the assurance that, if he is unable to obtain a satisfactory substitute tenant, he has already by virtue of his judgment obtained priority for his claim.
Given the fact that paragraph 16 expressly permits entry of judgment for the rent due on the balance of the term, I fail to see how the prothonotary must make reference to matters outside the record to calculate the amount of the judgment he will enter. The lease itself contains the length of the term and the amount of rent agreed upon. All that is necessary to calculate the amount of judgment is the date of default and an indication that the landlord is exercising his option to enter judgment for all rent due on the unexpired term. These facts were made available to the prothonotary by the averment of default, a document which, in Roche *205v. Rankin, 406 Pa. 92, 176 A. 2d 668 (1962), we expressly held is not outside 'the record. I thus conclude that the amount of the judgment could be ascertained without evidence dehors the record. The prothonotary therefore had statutory authority to enter the judgment.
Next must be considered appellants’ other arguments offered in support of their motion to strike.1 We said in Roche (supra at 97, 176 A. 2d at 672) : “However, if the judgment is entered for items clearly within the warrant, but for an excessive amount, the court, rather than strike, will modify the judgment and cause a proper judgment to be entered, unless (1) the judgment was entered for a grossly excessive amount and, hence, was an improper use of the authority given in the warrant; or, (2) the judgment entered shows on its face that unauthorized items were included: [citations omitted].” Appellants insist that the judgment entered ($66,622.50) was grossly excessive for the following reasons: (1) it contained a $8,190 mathematical error; (2) an attorney’s fee of $2,782.50 was improperly included;2 and (3) credit for $34,934.54 for fair rental value was not given pursuant to paragraph *20614(2) of the lease. The court below agreed that credit should be given for these items and thus reduced the judgment to $20,715.46, an amount appellants do not dispute is owing. I think it beyond doubt that the judgment entered was not grossly excessive. The bulk of the alleged excess is produced by the credit subsequently given for the fair rental value of the unexpired term. Since the lease expressly authorized a confession of judgment for all rent due for the balance of the term, a judgment entered for that amount cannot be considered excessive. Secondly, although an improperly included item, see footnote 2, supra, the attorney’s fee was authorized by the lease; having been authorized, its inclusion should not make the entry excessive. Finally, the $8,000 error should not vitiate the judgment; not only am I unable to classify an $8,-000 excess in a $66,000 judgment as gross, but I believe that the basis for the “grossly excessive” doctrine, i.e., a method to control abuse of the power conferred in an instrument to confess judgment, does not apply to a mathematical error. See Shuchman, Judgment Notes in Pennsylvania §8.1 (1961). These observations are confirmed by Flomar Corporation v. Logue, 418 Pa. 181, 210 A. 2d 254 (1965), our most recent case involving an alleged grossly excessive judgment. In Flomar, we characterized a $17,500 judgment as grossly excessive when the amount for which it should have been entered was $4,300. What is most important is ¡the fact that the excess in Flomar was the result not of a mathematical error but of an attempt to include rent for the unexpired balance of a term of a lease when the lease, as a matter of law, did not allow entry for that amount.
Finally, appellants suggest that appellee took possession of the premises for itself and not on behalf of the lessees so that the lessor is not entitled to both *207possession and future rent. The court below found, however, that appellee took possession on behalf of the tenant. This conclusion was based upon the fact that the lessor did not avail himself of the ejectment remedy provided in paragraph 17 of the lease.3 Although their brief is not clear, appellants apparently premise their argument upon the fact that the landlord made no demand for rent. The cases on which they rely, see, e.g., Elizabethtown Lodge No. 596 v. Ellis, 391 Pa. 19, 24, 137 A. 2d 286, 289 (1958), specifically state that a demand for rent is not necessary where such is expressly waived by the terms of the lease. This lease declares in paragraph 8: “Lessee covenants and agrees that he will without demand (a) Pay the rent . . . .” (Emphasis supplied.) Certainly, this declaration is a waiver.
I conclude that the court below was correct in its refusal to strike this judgment and must therefore dissent.

 I agree with the majority that the court below has correctly resolved the statute of frauds issue.

 Appellants apparently do not contend that vis-a-vis the attorney’s fee they can avail themselves of the second ground listed in Roche which will support a motion to strike, i.e., the inclusion of an unauthorized item. This is probably a result of a realization that such an attack would not succeed for, although an attorney’s fee is not properly included in a judgment secured under the Act of 1806, it was authorized on the face of the lease. The court below adopted the proper course when it modified the judgment to exclude the attorney’s fee for a striking of the judgment would have been improper. See Sterling Electric & Furniture Co. v. Peterson, 409 Pa. 435, 438, 187 A. 2d 285, 287 (1963); cf. McDowell National Bank of Sharon v. Vasconi, 407 Pa. 233, 178 A. 2d 589 (1962).

 Furthermore, it is doubtful that this contention is properly before us because it was not properly before the court below. It is well settled, subject to certain narrow exceptions not here applicable, that a petition to strike cannot be based on matters dehors the record. See generally Shuchman, Judgment Notes in Pennsylvania §44.2, §45.1 (1961). To demonstrate that the landlord took possession on his own behalf when the affidavit of default does not so disclose would require proof by evidence dehors the record.