Dorsett v. Watkins

1916 OK 705, 158 P. 608, 59 Okla. 198, 9 A.L.R. 278, 1916 Okla. LEXIS 1182
CourtSupreme Court of Oklahoma
DecidedJune 20, 1916
Docket7369
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 1916 OK 705 (Dorsett v. Watkins) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Oklahoma primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Dorsett v. Watkins, 1916 OK 705, 158 P. 608, 59 Okla. 198, 9 A.L.R. 278, 1916 Okla. LEXIS 1182 (Okla. 1916).

Opinion

Opinion by

GALBRAITH, C.

F. E. Watkins, as landlord, commenced this action in the court below against Tom Dorsett, his tenant, to recover rent claimed under a farm lease, and caused an attachment order to issue, and certain crops grown upon the leased premises to be seized thereunder. The First National Bank of Ryan, claiming a part of the property, to wit, certain cotton, under a chattel mortgage executed to it by the tenant, intervened, contending that its mortgage lien was superior to the claim of the landlord’s lien. A jury was waived, and there was trial to.the court upon an agreed statement of facts, and judgment rendered for the plaintiff against the tenant and inter-vener, from which an appeal has been duly prosecuted to this court.

It was agreed that F. E. Watkins entered into a lease contract with Tom Dorsett, by which the former let and leased to the latter the west 200 acres of the S ½ of section 15, township 6 S., range 7 W., in the county of Jefferson, state of Oklahoma, for the yew commencing January 1, 1913, and ending December 31, 1913; that the tenant agreed to plant 50 acres or more' of said land to cotton, and the balance of the cultivated land to wheat, oats, kaffir corn, maize, and peanuts, and that the cultivated land embraced an area of 135 acres and the pasture land an area of 65 acres; that the tenant agreed to pay as rental for said premises one-third of the oats, wheat, corn, and other feed crops, and one-fourth of the cotton raised on the land, and also to pay 50 cents per acre for the pasture land. It is also agreed that the tenant has paid the rental on all of the cultivated land, and that this action is for $32.50, the rent due .upon the grazing .land, and that the tenant had, within 30 days next preceding the filing of the action, commenced to remove the crops from the cultivated land, and had removed cotton to the amount of $32.50; that the tenant was willing to sell the cotton so removed and pay the rent on the grazing land, but that the First National Bank of Ryan, the mortgagee of the cotton, would not permit this to be done, and that the amount of rent claimed was due and unpaid. It is also agreed that the rent contract between the landlord and the tenant was not placed of record, and that the chattel mortgage given by the tenant to the bank was properly recorded.

The defendant in error presents a motion to dismiss upon the ground that the case-made fails to show that the order extending the time for making and serving the case-made was ever filed with the clerk and entered upon the journal. While this is true, the journal entry of the order extending the time is set out in the ease-made, and from this it affirmatively appears that the order was made in open court. This is sufficient evidence that the order was made. Holmberg v. Will, 49 Okla. 138, 152 Pac. 357. The motion to dismiss is therefore denied.

It is insisted by the plaintiffs in error that the landlord had no lien, for the rent due on the grazing land, on the cotton and other products grown on the cultivated land, and that therefore his attachment was improperly sued out, and that the mortgage lien of *199 the bank on the crop was superior to the claim of the landlord for rent. The statute (section 8806, Rev. Laws 1910) giving the landlord a lien for rent reads as follows:

“Any rent due for farming land shall he a lien on the crop growing or made on the premises. Such lien may be enforced by action and attachment therein, as hereinafter provided.”

The sections following make provision for the method of enforcing the landlord’s lien for rent.

The case of Eckhardt v. Taylor, 90 Kan. 698, 136 Pac. 218, relied upon by the plaintiffs in error to sustain their contention that the landlord’s lien for the rent due for the grazing land cannot be enforced against crops grown upon the cultivated land, does not support that contention. The claim sought to be enforced in that action was partly for rent and partly for damages arising under the rent contract, and the attachment issued on behalf of the landlord was levied upon a quantity of hay and upon some live stock. When the court found that the attachment permitted by the statute to the landlord to enforce a lien for rent had not been complied with, and that the ground for the attachment set out in the affidavit was that set out in the general statute authorizing attachments for the enforcement of claims for debt, the suggestion was made in the argument that crops grown on the premises only were subject to the landlord’s attachment for rent, but the court did not hold in that case that, if the farm rented by the landlord to the tenant embraced cultivated land and grazing land, and the cultivated, land included cotton land, corn land, wheat land, oats land, millet and kaffir corn, the landlord did not have a lien for his rent on the crops growing or made on the premises or any part thereof for the rent due on the grazing land.

“Farming land,” as used in the statute, does not mean simply cultivated land. In Gafney v. Kenison, 64 N. H. 854, 10 Atl. 706, the court held that a farm “includes the meadow land.” In Commonwealth v. Carmalt, 2 Bin. (Pa.) 235-238, the court said:

“Books hare been cited to show the meaning of the word ‘farm.’ It does not appear (hat the English affix a meaning to that word different from our idea of it. But, if they did, it would signify nothing. We must understand it as it is generally understood in Pennsylvania. By a farm we mean an indefinite quantity of land,, some of which is cultivated. Most farms contain parcels of land applied to different purposes. Some are used for the cultivation of grass, some of grain, and some remain in wood. It is very common for the proprietors of farms to have a piece of woodland, not contiguous to the place of their residence, but appurtenant to it. I can see no reason why those different parcels of land should not be reckoned as one farm; nor has any authority been cited to the contrary.”

In re Drake (D. C.) 114 Fed. 229, at page 231, in discussing the meaning of the word “farming” as used in the Bankruptcy Act, the court said:

“Nor will it profit to trace historically the meaning of the word ‘farming.’ In its purely agricultural sense, its use is comparatively modern. Within the purview of this statute it is understood to mean the business of cultivating land, or employing it for the purposes of husbandry; and a farm is a tract devoted to cultivation under a single control, whether it be large or small, isolated or made up of many parcels. For a long time after the words began to be used in an agricultural sense, they were applied to lands held on lease, and ‘demise, lease, and to farm let’ are still the operative words of a lease, but they are in modem use, applied without respect to nature of tenure. Robinson Crusoe says, T farmed upon my own land,’ so it ap.-pears that the words have been used in their present sense for nearly 200 years.”

• In Kendall v. Miller, 47 How. Prac. (N. Y.) 446, at page 448, the Supreme Court of New York said:

“In more modern times the word ‘farm’ has received a still more extended signification, and now denotes, in this country, both in a popular and legal sense, a considerable tract of land, devoted, in part at least, to cultivation, with suitable buildings, and under the supervision of a single occupant, regardless of the nature or extent of his tenure.”

In Williams v. C.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
1916 OK 705, 158 P. 608, 59 Okla. 198, 9 A.L.R. 278, 1916 Okla. LEXIS 1182, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/dorsett-v-watkins-okla-1916.