Alan Porter Lee, Inc. v. Du-Rite Products Co.

79 A.2d 218, 366 Pa. 548
CourtSupreme Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedMarch 19, 1951
DocketAppeal, No. 72
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 79 A.2d 218 (Alan Porter Lee, Inc. v. Du-Rite Products Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Alan Porter Lee, Inc. v. Du-Rite Products Co., 79 A.2d 218, 366 Pa. 548 (Pa. 1951).

Opinion

Opinion by

Mr. Justice Ladner,

The appellant, intervening defendant in a mechanic’s lien proceeding, appeals from a judgment for the [550]*550plaintiff entered on a verdict rendered in Ms favor on the trial of a sci. fa. sur mechanic’s lien.

The plaintiff, an engineering corporation, incorporated under the law of New York, filed a mechanic’s lien under the Act of June 4, 1901, P. L. 431, as amended (49 P.S. 1 et seq.) against the one-story brick factory building and boiler house and lots or pieces of ground with the curtilage appurtenant thereto, situate in the Borough of Sinking Spring, Berks County, Pa., of which property the Du-Rite Products Company Inc. was owner. The lien claimed $10,822.25 and was averred to be for the “furnishing of engineering services for the. design, supervision of construction and initiation of operations of a plant for spray drying of detergent products on the premises of the defendant.”

The lien set forth that the services were rendered in accordance with an oral contract by which the claimant “agreed to furnish and did perform all the chemical, mechanical and civil engineering for the establishment of suitable processing machinery, plans and specifications for and toward the erection of a new building and large concrete towers for the spray drying of chemicals, the development of plans and specifications for auxiliary pipe lines, storage vessels, fuel oil installations, steam boiler and steam boiler distribution installations and for the complete plant design and specifications for the erection of the said new buildings and towers and equipment; in accordance with the said oral contract aforementioned, the owner and contractor, the Du-Rite Products Co., Inc., . . . agreed to pay . . . the following rates: For the principal Engineer, Alan Porter Lee, $15.00 per hour, Senior Associates $10.00 per hour, Junior Associates $7.50 per hour, Draftsman $5.00 per hour.”

The defendant in the lien, the Du-Rite Products Co. Inc., filed no affidavit of defense to the sci. fa. is[551]*551sued sur lien, but the appellant, the Berks County Trust Co., a lien creditor, intervened by leave of court and did file an affidavit of defense contesting the lien on the ground, inter alia, that claimant furnished only architectural or engineering services for designing of certain alterations to an existing plant and denying he rendered any services of supervision of construction and initiation of operation of the plant. Certain other issues were raised, but in the view that we take of the matter, they need not be considered.

The cause proceeded to trial and resulted in a verdict for the full amount of the appellee’s claim. The intervening defendant moved for judgment n.o.v. and from the dismissal of that motion we have this appeal.

While the mechanic’s lien law of 1901 as amended, Sec. 3, 49 P.S. 3, apparently extended its benefits to one who merely makes plans, it was held a construction of the Act of 1901 that would extend its benefits to an architect, merely for preparing plans would render it invalid as a special law for extension of liens or as changing the method for collection of debts in contravention of Sec. 7 of Article III of the Constitution of 1874: Dyer v. Wallace, 264 Pa. 169, 174, 107 A. 754 (1919). The right of one acting as an architect, planner or designer to file and maintain a mechanic’s lien must consequently be referred to and limited by the law as it stood before the Constitution of 1874. The law as it then stood is correctly summarized by Trickett in his “Law of Liens in Pennsylvania,” Vol. 1, Sec. 9, p. 11, as follows: “An architect has no lien for merely drawing plans and specifications for the building, though he visits the site of the building before its commencement to explain the drawings to the mechanics; it is otherwise if he is employed to be on the ground during the erection of the building, to make [552]*552designs for every part, to direct tbe execution of tbe same by tbe various mechanics, to examine tbe material employed, to advise with tbe owner of tbe building in contracting for every portion of tbe work or materials, to examine all accounts, etc.”

In support of tbis proposition is cited Rush v. Able, 90 Pa. 153 (1879); Price v. Kirk, 90 Pa. 47 (1879) ; Bank of Pennsylvania v. Gries, 35 Pa. 423 (1860). To wbicb we add, as later authority, Dyer v. Wallace, 264 Pa. 169, 107 A. 754 (1919) and Hoekstra v. Hopkins, 87 Pa. Superior Ct. 15 (1925), where Judge Keller said at p. 18, “He [an architect] can recover for bis plans and drawings in tbis proceeding only because of tbe fact that they are incidental to and enhance bis work of superintending and supervising tbe actual construction.”

The principal question to be decided on tbis appeal is whether tbe evidence at tbe trial shows tbe supervision or superintendence required to satisfy tbe law as just stated. While tbe lien avers in general terms that engineering services of supervision were rendered, we note that in point of fact, tbe averment in tbe lien of tbe terms of tbe oral contract does not set forth that claimant was employed to supervise or superintend tbe construction but merely to plan and design tbe same, nor do tbe invoices, annexed to tbe lien setting forth tbe detail charges for tbe time devoted by tbe engineer or assistants, include any time charged for superintendence or supervision. Moreover, in tbe lien any visit to tbe work must rest solely on inference from two invoices, 746, 745, annexed to tbe lien, wbicb charge merely expenses of tbe visit to tbe work and contain no charge for time devoted to superintendence or supervision. However, these defects wbicb we have noted were amendable as of right: Knoell v. Carey, Sheriff, 291 Pa. 531, 534, 140 A. 522 [553]*553(1928), and after trial on tlie merits, especially as here where the lien had actually been discharged by a sheriff’s sale, it may be treated as amended in those respects in which the amendment is of right: Knoell v. Carey, Sheriff, supra.

We, therefore, come to the question whether the testimony at the trial was sufficient to support a finding that the claimant (Lee, Inc.) actually supervised or superintended the construction and that the plans, drawings and designs were incidental to such supervision.

In Prouse v. Stocker, 74 Pa. Superior Ct. 55 (1920), at p. 58, Mr. Justice Linn, then Judge of the Superior Court, in the course of his opinion, said, “According to the Century Dictionary, to superintend is ‘to direct the course and oversee the details (of some work, as the construction of a building)’; ‘to manage’; the words ‘overlook,’ ‘control,’ and ‘supervise’ are synonyms; superintendence is doing the foregoing.”

The work of construction and alteration was never completed. Construction was stopped on March 31, 1947, when the plant was about 20% completed. According to the undisputed testimony taken in the light most favorable to the claimant, Lee, Inc., maintained no superintendent, overseer or inspector on the job during the course of construction. The testimony further shows that visits were made to Sinking Spring as follows: By Alan Porter Lee, principal engineer, on December 16, 1946, January 7, 8, 16, February 7, 8 and March 13, 1947; by Adams, claimant’s associate engineer, on November 14, 21, 1946, and in company with Mr. Lee February 7, 1947. Of these trips or visits to Sinking Spring the three in 1946 were for the purpose of inspecting or checking the site

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Bluebook (online)
79 A.2d 218, 366 Pa. 548, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/alan-porter-lee-inc-v-du-rite-products-co-pa-1951.