Carty v. Blauth

147 P. 949, 169 Cal. 713, 1915 Cal. LEXIS 559
CourtCalifornia Supreme Court
DecidedMarch 30, 1915
DocketSac. No. 2138.
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 147 P. 949 (Carty v. Blauth) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering California Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Carty v. Blauth, 147 P. 949, 169 Cal. 713, 1915 Cal. LEXIS 559 (Cal. 1915).

Opinion

MELVIN, J.

Plaintiff appeals from a judgment entered after the sustaining of a demurrer to his complaint.

The complaint was in three counts. Briefly stated, the facts alleged were as follows:

Plaintiff was the tenant from month to month of two floors of a building situated in the city of Sacramento and belonging to defendant. Plaintiff had been for two years conducting successfully a lodging-house in the part of the building so occupied. The owner of the adjacent property, the Folsom Investment Company, began excavating on its land, and finding it necessary to dig lower than the foundations of defendant’s building, gave written notice to defendant of the general nature of the excavations, but defendant failed to do anything by way of providing lateral support for his building. Despite the exercise of reasonable care by the owner of the adjoining land in making the excavation and without negligence or fault on plaintiff’s part, the building collapsed, thereby seriously injuring plaintiff, destroying the furniture in her lodging-house, causing her in her flight to leave behind one hundred dollars worth of other personal property, and breaking up her business. The facts pleaded and the relief asked are the same in each count. The first count is upon defendant’s alleged negligence in failing to shore up or otherwise protect his building; in the second it is alleged that by such failure he created and maintained a nuisance; and in the third it is averred that by reason of defendant’s negligence plaintiff was deprived of the possession and enjoyment of the premises which had been leased to her. Plaintiff’s counsel in his brief insists that the landlord is liable to his tenant under the circumstances alleged: 1. For disturbing the tenant’s rights in violation of the implied covenant for quiet enjoyment; 2. For permitting a nuisance on the premises; 3. For breach of his general duty to the public to refrain from negligent conduct; and 4. For violation of his special duty not to injure any one properly on his real property.

Appellant’s counsel concedes that the case of Brewster v. De Fremery, 33 Cal. 344, is directly adverse to his views, but *715 seeks to differentiate that case from this one because the former was decided' before the code prescribed notice by the owner of adjacent property of his intention to excavate and because, as he insists, the opinion in that case was not devoted to a consideration of the duty of a landlord to refrain from disturbing the tenant’s quiet enjoyment of the premises, or to other duties of such landlord as an owner of real property or as a member of the community in general.

Brewster v. De Fremery was in all of its essentials exactly like the case at bar. The plaintiff’s decedent had been killed by the collapse of a building of which he was tenant from month to month. No covenants to keep the premises in repair or in habitable condition were averred, and for the purposes of the decision the court assumed that there were none. The house fell because of an excavation on the adjacent land. Defendants had timely notice of the excavation, which they ignored. A demurrer to a complaint wrhieh pleaded these facts was sustained. The court said in the course of the opinion r

“The house did not fall in consequence of any act of the owners, but in consequence of the acts of parties owning the adjoining lot, in excavating it for purposes of their own, after the deceased entered into the possession of the demised premises under the lease. There was no covenant on the part of the lessors, the defendants, to uphold or keep the premises in repair, or in a habitable condition. Without an express covenant to that effect, they were not bound to repair, or to keep the premises in a habitable condition. We think the rule correctly stated in Howard v. Doolittle, 3 Duer (10 N. Y. Super. Ct.) , 464. In that case it was held that a landlord is in no case bound to repair, unless by force of an express covenant or contract, and that, even when a building is let for a special purpose, and its use and occupation for any other is, in terms, prohibited, there is no implied contract or warranty on the part of the landlord that the building shall be, or continue, fit for the purpose for which it was demised. . . . Aside from the relation of landlord and tenant there is no ground, under the circumstances alleged, for holding defendants responsible. The injuries resulted from the occupancy of the premises by the deceased as a tenant. The landlord was under no obligation to up *716 hold or repair, and there was no breach of duty on his part. The cases cited in relation to nuisances have no application. ’ ’

We see no reason for departing from the doctrine of Brewster v. De Fremery, unless the duty of the landlord has been changed by section 832 of the Civil Code, which was adopted after the decision of that case. That authority has been cited with the approval, particularly on the ruling that the only consequence of a breach of a landlord’s obligation to repair is that the tenant may either vacate the premises or expend one month’s rent toward repairs after ineffectual notice to the lessor to make such repairs. (Sieber v. Blanc, 76 Cal. 174, [18 Pac. 260] ; Gately v. Campbell, 124 Cal. 523, [57 Pac. 567].) And the same principle has been announced in such cases as Maroney v. Hellings, 110 Cal. 220, [42 Pac. 560]; Van Every v. Ogg, 59 Cal. 565; Green v. Redding, 92 Cal. 550, [28 Pac. 599] ; Callahan v. Loughran, 102 Cal. 480, [36 Pac. 835]. And it has been held that in the absence from the lease of a covenant obliging the landlord to make repairs and keep the premises in habitable condition he is not liable for injuries to the tenant or others, resulting from defects in the leased property. (Willson v. Treadwell, 81 Cal. 58, [22 Pac. 304] ; Daley v. Quick, 99 Cal. 180, [33 Pac. 859].)

Appellant, while admitting the force of these decisions, insists that since the adoption of section 832 of the Civil Code, the notice prescribed by that section creates a duty upon the part of the landlord, to safeguard his building from possible collapse and that he owes such duty, if not to the owner of the adjacent land, at least to others. But since the adoption of that section, the rights and -duties of proprietors of adjoining property are substantially the same as they were before. (Aston v. Nolan, 63 Cal. 274.) In First National Bank v. Villegra, 92 Cal. 98, [28 Pac. 97], it was held that the excavating owner, after giving notice, could not collect any compensation for protecting his neighbor’s property. It was there held that the purpose of section 832 iri its broadest scope was to enable the excavator to relieve himself from liability, not to create any liability in his favor against his neighbor. In Conboy v. Dickinson, 92 Cal. 604, [28 Pac. 809], the court quoted from the opinion in Aston v. Nolan, 63 Cal.

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Bluebook (online)
147 P. 949, 169 Cal. 713, 1915 Cal. LEXIS 559, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/carty-v-blauth-cal-1915.