Court Opinion

ID: 9705659
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:15:12.273495+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:21.791696
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mb. Justice Musmanno :
Mrs. Lillian S. Bogutz was injured in the basement of the apartment house located in Merion, Montgomery County, where she and her husband leased an apartment (No. 612). She and her husband sued the owners of the building charging them with negligence. The defendants filed preliminary objections, averring that they were exempt from liability as the result of the accident because the lease specifically excluded such liability. The lower Court sustained the objections and nonsuited the plaintiffs. This Court has affirmed the nonsuit.
This appeal poses no monumental question in jurisprudence, nor does it search for a star of magnitude in the sky of stare decisis. It simply asks that we read a few words in a document and declare what they mean. This seems like a work of supererogation because the words speak for themselves, being in Eng-*157lisli, unencumbered by fancy legal phraseology and unadorned with Latin phrases within which an occult meaning is ambushed for a specific purpose. The lease says: “Lessor shall not be liable for any damage to any property or person at any time in said premises or building, from water, rain, or snow, which may leak into, issue or flow from any part of said building or from the pipes or the plumbing works of the same, or from any other place or quarter. Lessor shall not be responsible for any injury or damage that may happen to the person or goods of Lessee or anyone claiming under Lessee, or his servants or employees, either on the elevators, corridors, stairways, walks or driveways, or in or about the premises, from any cause whatsoever, and Lessee hereby agrees to indemnify and save harmless the Lessor from any action for damages brought by any invitee, servant or employee of Lessee therefor.”
Since the accident did not occur in or about the premises leased by the plaintiffs, but in the basement of the building of the defendant, the plaintiffs contend that they are not precluded from a recovery by the wording of the lease. The defendants take a contrary position, arguing that the word “premises” was not intended to be restricted to the plaintiffs’ apartment but that it applied to the entire building. If that be so, why does the lease say that the lessor shall not be liable for any damage “in said premises or building”? Why differentiate between premises and building if the word premises includes building?
If the defendants’ interpretation, supported by this Court, is correct, why does the lease say that the lessor is not responsible for any damage caused “on the elevators, corridors, stairways, walks or driveways, or in or about the premises”? If premises includes the whole building, why specifically mention “elevators, *158corridors, stairways, etc.”? If premises includes building, wby does the lease add “in or about the premises”?
It is true, as the Majority Opinion says, that in Paragraph 18 of the lease the leased apartment is referred to as the “demised premises,” but the apartment is also referred to in other parts of the lease as simply the “premises.” Paragraph 8 refers to the apartment as “said premises”; Paragraph 9 enumerates violations which authorize the landlord to recover “possession of the premises”.
It is not readily apparent from the record how many stories high the defendants’ apartment house rose. The lease shows that the plaintiffs’ apartment was located on the sixth floor. Taking language in its usual sense, one would ordinarily not refer to the basement of a six-story building as part of the premises occupied by any of the apartment dwellers. If the building were twenty stories high, it would be absurd to say that the basement of such a structure was part of the premises occupied by a tenant on the twentieth floor.
Robert South said that: “Speech was given to the ordinary sort of men whereby to communicate their mind; but to wise men, whereby to conceal it.” It would seem that the lessors here were very wise men and came close to concealing their liability in the verbiage of the lease which the lessees signed. However, I should think that the lantern of the law which says all doubts which arise as to the meaning of disputed clauses in leases must be resolved in favor of the lessees and against the lessors,* reveals a situation which requires the defendants to answer to the plaintiffs’ complaint, and I would accordingly remove the nonsuit.

 Darrow et al. v. Keystone, 365 Pa. 123; Lyons v. Cantor, 363 Pa. 413; Larsh v. Frank and Seder, 347 Pa. 387.