Court Opinion

ID: 9754246
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:51:52.904114+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:51.044192
License: Public Domain

CAYTON, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
We have here a situation illustrating anew the confusion which so often results when laymen attempt to draw legal documents without legal assistance.
These parties contracted for the rental of a parking lot on a day-to-day basis. To accomplish that purpose they took a printed form of agreement intended to cover a term lease, x’d out certain provisions, and typed in others intended to express their intention.
It is true that in the introductory part they described the letting as being “by the month.” But in the typewritten part it was provided that the tenant would “remove and quit the said premises 24 hours after the time notice to quit is served upon him. * * * ” It was also provided that the tenant “shall operate on a 24 hour notice to quit, tenant waiving any and all other notices of quitting said premises.” This last clause was in accordance with Code 1940, § 45-908, which authorizes parties to substitute for the usual 30-day notice to quit “a longer or shorter notice * * * or to waive all such notice.”
I think it is unrealistic, and technical in the extreme, to attempt to fit this informal rental into the category of a formal “tenancy by the month”, to vest it with common-law rigidity and to say that the 24 hour notice was invalid because it was not made to expire “on the day of the month from which such tenancy commenced to run.”
To me it seems plain that the parties never intended such a result, and that crude though their draftsmanship was, they plainly had in mind a tenancy which could be ended 'at any time by a 24 hour notice. This is emphasized by the landlord’s agreement to rebate any rent paid for a period beyond the time the notice might be served. Also I think that though the right to notice may be reciprocal, it does not follow that a notice given by one party must be identical in length to that required of the other.
I would rule that this was a tenancy at will under Code, § 45-822, that the notice was valid, and that the judgment should be affirmed.