Court Opinion

ID: 2463522
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2013-10-30 09:42:33.248831+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:18:27.606550
License: Public Domain

210 U.S. 41 (1908)
GAZLAY
v.
WILLIAMS, TRUSTEE OF BROWN, BANKRUPT.
No. 164.
Supreme Court of United States.
Argued March 11, 1908.
Decided May 18, 1908.
APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT.
*44 Mr. Oscar W. Kuhn for appellants.
Mr. Province M. Pogue and Mr. Walter A. De Camp for appellee.
*47 MR. CHIEF JUSTICE FULLER, after making the foregoing statement, delivered the opinion of the court.
The passage of the lessee's estate from Brown, the bankrupt, to Williams, the trustee, as of the date of the adjudication, was by operation of law and not by the act of the bankrupt, nor was it by sale. The condition imposed forfeiture if the lessee assigned the lease or the lessee's interest should be sold under execution or other legal process without lessors' written consent.
A sale by the trustee for the benefit of Brown's creditors was not forbidden by the condition and would not be in breach thereof. It would not be a voluntary assignment by the lessee, nor a sale of the lessee's interest, but of the trustees' interest held under the bankruptcy proceedings for the benefit of creditors. Jones in his work on Landlord and Tenant lays it down (§ 466) that "an ordinary covenant against subletting and assignment is not broken by a transfer of the leased premises by operation of law, but the covenant may be so *48 drawn as to expressly prohibit such a transfer, and in that case the lease would be forfeited by an assignment by operation of law." The covenant here is not of that character.
The doctrine of Dumpor's Case, 4 Rep. 119; S.C., 1 Smith's Leading Cases, *85, is that a condition not to alien without license is determined by the first license granted, and District Judge Thompson expressed the opinion that it was applicable here, and that the sale to Brown, under the order of the Superior Court of Cincinnati entered on the petition of these lessors for the recovery of rent, set the leasehold free from the forfeiture clauses, especially as that court did not direct that the sale be subject to the terms, covenants and conditions of the lease, as prayed for in the petition. Moreover the lessors, in their answer in these proceedings, stated that "said lease and the premises thereby leased passed into the possession of Harry D. Brown, the bankrupt herein, without the written consent of said lessors, but with their acquiescence only, and that said condition in said lease is still in full force and effect as against said Harry D. Brown and his trustee in bankruptcy herein."
In respect of the lessors Brown may be treated, then, as if he were the original lessee, and the sale by his assignee in bankruptcy, under order of the bankruptcy court, was not a breach of the condition in question. The language of Bayley, J., in Doe v. Bevan, 3 M. & S. 353, cited by the Court of Appeals, is applicable.
The premises in question in this case, being a public house, were demised by Goodbehere to one Shaw for a term of years, and Shaw covenanted that he, his executors, etc., should not nor would during the term assign the indenture, or his or their interest therein, or assign, set or underlet the message and premises, or any part thereof, to any person or persons whatsoever, without the consent in writing of the lessor, his executors, etc. Proviso, that in case Shaw, his executors, etc., should part with his or their interest in the premises, or any part thereof, contrary to his covenant that the lessor might *49 reenter. Afterwards Shaw deposited this lease with Whitbread & Company as a security for the repayment of money borrowed of them; and, becoming bankrupt, and his estate and effects being assigned by the commissioners to his assignees, the lease was, upon the petition of Whitbread & Company, directed by the Lord Chancellor to be sold in discharge of their debt, and was, accordingly, sold to the defendant, and, without the consent of Goodbehere, assigned to the defendant by the assignees, and he entered, etc. The trial judge ruled that this was not a breach of the proviso not to assign without consent, etc., inasmuch as the covenant did not extend to Shaw's assignees, they being assignees in law; wherefore he directed a nonsuit. The rule to set aside the nonsuit was discharged on argument before Lord Ellenborough, C.J.; LeBlanc, J.; Bayley, J., and Danforth, J. (delivering concurring opinions), and Bayley, J., said:
"It has never been considered that the lessee's becoming bankrupt was an avoiding of the lease within this proviso; and if it be not, what act has the lessee done to avoid it? All that has followed upon his bankruptcy is not by his act, but by the operation of law transferring his property to his assignees. Then shall the assignees have capacity to take it, and yet not to dispose of it. Shall they take it only for their own benefit, or be obliged to retain it in their hands to the prejudice of the creditors, for whose benefit the law originally cast it upon them? Undoubtedly that can never be."
Decree Affirmed.