FOURNET, Chief Justice.
This suit was instituted by Gus Friedman and Arthur Arnold, businessmen of Shreveport, for a declaratory judgment decreeing that on June 5, 1956, the defendant, Noel Estate, Inc., through its President James S. Noel,1 by verbal agreement leased to them certain adjoining parcels of land already occupied as their places of business,2 fronting on the Greenwood Road on the outskirts of the city,3 the allegations of the petition being that, under the terms of a written lease dated July 22, 1952, between these plaintiffs and the defendant, Friedman occupied a strip to the west of another tenant (Simmons Drilling Company), Arnold occupied the land adjoining Friedman on the west, and a third parcel, immediately to the west of Arnold’s premises and extending to the next tenant on the west, was leased to the plaintiffs jointly, the description of these areas in the lease being by boundaries only;4 that although [449]*449the lease was not to terminate until June 30, 1957, the plaintiffs, being anxious to have assurance of renewal because of the expense of moving, lack of available locations (particularly for a scrap yard), and a then-existing possibility of being required by ordinance to fence their respective areas —an impracticable outlay for a short period — began more than a year before termination date to urge the defendant to renew their leases, and in response the defendant’s president, James S. Noel, on June 5, 1956, appeared with a surveying instrument and measured, for each plaintiff, a strip having a frontage of 200 feet to either side of a cement marker on Greenwood Road located five feet from the east side of the office building of Arthur Arnold (in the extreme northeast corner of his land), the survey extending 200 feet to the east thereof (Friedman’s plot) and 200 feet to the west (Arnold’s plot), thence between parallel lines to the railroad right-of-way, with recognition of the existing division line between the properties, and with the privilege, in the case of Friedman who had installed a special spur over the rear portion of the tract to his east, to use 100 feet of additional ground paralleling his switch track for convenience in loading and unloading freight cars; the said verbal lease to be for a term of five years commencing July 1, 1957, at a monthly rental of $100 per month ending June 30, 1962, with the option to extend said lease for four more years at a monthly rental of $115 per month or to meet the bona fide offer made by any other person at least 90 days before option time; that as further consideration, plaintiffs were to immediately give up and clear of their materials the portion of land leased to them jointly, and additionally Friedman was to clear off and immediately release to defendant all property not covered by his verbal contract;
The answer, in the form of a general denial, also denied that defendant executed or authorized the alleged verbal lease of June 5, 1956, denied any justification for the construction placed by plaintiffs on the two letters addressed to them on June 12, 1956, admitted the alleged offer from the Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company to lease the property at a much higher rental upon termination of plaintiffs’ written lease, and denied any legal basis for a controversy or the necessity for a declaratory judgment, with prayer for dismissal of plaintiffs’ suit.
[451]*451Following trial on the merits there was judgment for plaintiffs decreeing that, for a term of five years beginning July 1, 1957, to July 1, 1962, Friedman and Arnold had good and enforceable leases on the particular parcels described in the judgment (these being the two areas surveyed by Noel on June 4, 1956), at $100 per month, with the option to plaintiffs to extend for four more years, or to July 1, 1966, at $115 per month or to meet a bona fide and competent offer, made in writing, at least ninety days before option time, and subject to the further proviso that if another road, street or highway is put in at the rear of this property, “each lease will shrink from or withdraw from a strip of land fronting on the said new street, road or highway a depth of 200 feet across the rear.”
Defendant-appellant, assigning as error the trial judge’s holding that oral leases were executed by the defendant which are valid and subsisting contracts and that the June 12, 1956, letters were not offers but were a confirmation of the terms of said leases, and the further holding that the Articles of Incorporation of defendant authorized its president to execute leases without authority of its board of directors, submit that Mr. Noel’s reason for going to plaintiffs’ places of business was solely to give the plaintiffs fence lines, as requested by them; 7 the concluding paragraph in the June 12th letters, concerning removal of plaintiffs’ material from other areas covered by the written lease, is explained as having been induced by the thought that since the fence line had been provided, in the words of Mr. James Noel, “I didn’t see any need of having iron outside the fence * As an alternative defense, defendant contends there was no corporate authority for the lease because if any be found (there being none in defendant’s by-laws or the statutory corporation law), it must appear in Article VIII of the Charter, as amended,8 yet those provisions give authority to the president to perform administrative acts only — which means, say counsel, to manage, control, and conserve the assets of the corporation, and does not include the execution of a lease of the corporation’s commercial real estate, “which is a species of alienation.”
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FOURNET, Chief Justice.
This suit was instituted by Gus Friedman and Arthur Arnold, businessmen of Shreveport, for a declaratory judgment decreeing that on June 5, 1956, the defendant, Noel Estate, Inc., through its President James S. Noel,1 by verbal agreement leased to them certain adjoining parcels of land already occupied as their places of business,2 fronting on the Greenwood Road on the outskirts of the city,3 the allegations of the petition being that, under the terms of a written lease dated July 22, 1952, between these plaintiffs and the defendant, Friedman occupied a strip to the west of another tenant (Simmons Drilling Company), Arnold occupied the land adjoining Friedman on the west, and a third parcel, immediately to the west of Arnold’s premises and extending to the next tenant on the west, was leased to the plaintiffs jointly, the description of these areas in the lease being by boundaries only;4 that although [449]*449the lease was not to terminate until June 30, 1957, the plaintiffs, being anxious to have assurance of renewal because of the expense of moving, lack of available locations (particularly for a scrap yard), and a then-existing possibility of being required by ordinance to fence their respective areas —an impracticable outlay for a short period — began more than a year before termination date to urge the defendant to renew their leases, and in response the defendant’s president, James S. Noel, on June 5, 1956, appeared with a surveying instrument and measured, for each plaintiff, a strip having a frontage of 200 feet to either side of a cement marker on Greenwood Road located five feet from the east side of the office building of Arthur Arnold (in the extreme northeast corner of his land), the survey extending 200 feet to the east thereof (Friedman’s plot) and 200 feet to the west (Arnold’s plot), thence between parallel lines to the railroad right-of-way, with recognition of the existing division line between the properties, and with the privilege, in the case of Friedman who had installed a special spur over the rear portion of the tract to his east, to use 100 feet of additional ground paralleling his switch track for convenience in loading and unloading freight cars; the said verbal lease to be for a term of five years commencing July 1, 1957, at a monthly rental of $100 per month ending June 30, 1962, with the option to extend said lease for four more years at a monthly rental of $115 per month or to meet the bona fide offer made by any other person at least 90 days before option time; that as further consideration, plaintiffs were to immediately give up and clear of their materials the portion of land leased to them jointly, and additionally Friedman was to clear off and immediately release to defendant all property not covered by his verbal contract;
The answer, in the form of a general denial, also denied that defendant executed or authorized the alleged verbal lease of June 5, 1956, denied any justification for the construction placed by plaintiffs on the two letters addressed to them on June 12, 1956, admitted the alleged offer from the Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company to lease the property at a much higher rental upon termination of plaintiffs’ written lease, and denied any legal basis for a controversy or the necessity for a declaratory judgment, with prayer for dismissal of plaintiffs’ suit.
[451]*451Following trial on the merits there was judgment for plaintiffs decreeing that, for a term of five years beginning July 1, 1957, to July 1, 1962, Friedman and Arnold had good and enforceable leases on the particular parcels described in the judgment (these being the two areas surveyed by Noel on June 4, 1956), at $100 per month, with the option to plaintiffs to extend for four more years, or to July 1, 1966, at $115 per month or to meet a bona fide and competent offer, made in writing, at least ninety days before option time, and subject to the further proviso that if another road, street or highway is put in at the rear of this property, “each lease will shrink from or withdraw from a strip of land fronting on the said new street, road or highway a depth of 200 feet across the rear.”
Defendant-appellant, assigning as error the trial judge’s holding that oral leases were executed by the defendant which are valid and subsisting contracts and that the June 12, 1956, letters were not offers but were a confirmation of the terms of said leases, and the further holding that the Articles of Incorporation of defendant authorized its president to execute leases without authority of its board of directors, submit that Mr. Noel’s reason for going to plaintiffs’ places of business was solely to give the plaintiffs fence lines, as requested by them; 7 the concluding paragraph in the June 12th letters, concerning removal of plaintiffs’ material from other areas covered by the written lease, is explained as having been induced by the thought that since the fence line had been provided, in the words of Mr. James Noel, “I didn’t see any need of having iron outside the fence * As an alternative defense, defendant contends there was no corporate authority for the lease because if any be found (there being none in defendant’s by-laws or the statutory corporation law), it must appear in Article VIII of the Charter, as amended,8 yet those provisions give authority to the president to perform administrative acts only — which means, say counsel, to manage, control, and conserve the assets of the corporation, and does not include the execution of a lease of the corporation’s commercial real estate, “which is a species of alienation.”
Counsel for plaintiffs-appellants, after inviting attention to facts and circumstances developed during the course of the trial which are said to be unreconcilable with defendant’s position that the letter of June 12th was an offer and not a confirmation of the contract already perfect and complete in itself, maintain the correctness of the trial judge’s ruling; they also argue, alternatively, that acceptance of an offer can be by acts; invoke the rule of strict construction against the author of an ambiguous document (the defendant’s president having composed the letters of June 12, 1956); and, to indicate the authority of Noel, as president, to act for the corporation, show that the president of defendant corporation had always leased the properties to these plaintiffs (beginning in 1946 with Friedman, and in 1949 with Arnold), and submit that the defendant held James Noel out as having authority— [452]*452pointing out that the power to lease does not have to he expressed or special (Article 2997, La.Civil Code).
The arguments made in this Court differ little if any from those made below, as revealed by the trial judge’s carefully prepared Reasons. He found that the facts of the case as developed during the trial were substantially in agreement with plaintiffs’ allegations, and in this he is amply supported by the record — for Noel’s explanations of his actions are lame, and other circumstances lead to the inevitable conclusion that (as found by the judge a quo) the parties agreed, on June 5, 1956, on the amount of property that the new lease was to cover and the terms thereof, and that the letter of June 12th was a confirmation thereof. This was convincingly shown, said the judge, by the “bare actions of the parties;” for example, there was a survey of the property to be leased, not of that presently under lease; each plaintiff thereafter gathered his property within the newly marked 200-foot strip, at a cost to Friedman of $1,200 and to Arnold of several hundred dollars; Friedman immediately built a $6,000 concrete building, erected a fence along his newly surveyed eastern boundary, and released the 58 feet between his truncated holdings and the Simmons Company; defendant entered upon the said released 58 foot area, had a large portion excavated and leveled, and disposed of the earth for use in a project then under way; Noel visited the premises on several occasions and saw the changes made by Friedman, but never inquired about an answer to his letter of June 12th; plaintiffs were given no intimation during all this period that a new lease had not been confected; in late January, 1957, Noel, having received a substantially higher offer, after consulting- counsel conceived his letter of June 12th to be an offer to renew the lease with plaintiffs, and sought to revoke same. He thereupon called Friedman into his office, advised of an offer to lease the entire tract for a proposed community shopping center, and showed him a previously prepared letter addressed to each plaintiff withdrawing the “offer” of June 12, 1956, for failure of acceptance;9 on February 2, 1957, Noel advised plaintiffs by letter that he had a firm offer from the A. & P. Tea Company of $350 per month for each of the 200-foot tracts occupied by plaintiffs, that other lease tenants had signed to occupy the plat in their usual business capacity, that money for improvements was forthcoming, and gave them until Friday, February 8, 1957, to answer in writing whether they would meet the above offer — failing in which they were to remove all their improvements and possessions by the 31st of July, 1957.10 Defendant’s last letter, dated February 12, 1957,11 indicated that matters had reached an impasse, expressing not only threats of evic[453]*453tion and a damage suit but the novel view that “Your failure to meet their offer or notify us you would vacate the area has extremely dangerous possibilities for you.” On February 15, 1957, a written lease was executed between the defendant company and H. B. Frazier, the term being fifty years beginning August 1, 1957. The plaintiffs then turned to the courts for a determination of the rights and obligations of the parties.
We are not impressed with the defendant’s alternative defense that there was no corporate authority for the leases at issue here. The corporation is composed of (and all outstanding stock is owned by) W. B. Noel, formerly President, his wife, their son James S. Noel, now President, and a daughter who has resided out of the State; the Board of Directors, according to James S. Noel, is composed of his mother, father, wife and himself. By original charter the President was given all the powers of the corporation without necessity of any authorization by the Board; by an amendment to Article VIII (see footnote 7), recorded on June 3, 1933, the President was deprived specifically of the power to buy and sell, mortgage and hypothecate the property, rights and credits of the corporation without the approval of the Board, leaving him the “power and authority to perform administrative acts only.” The defendant corporation’s sole business is to lease its property, and by its action has indicated that the “administrative authority” reposing in its President is very broad — as witness the fact that business transactions were invariably conducted by the President and he was the only member of the corporation known to these plaintiffs; it was with the President that all leases were confected, whether oral, or by informal notation of acceptance on a letter written by the President, or by written act under private signature, as in the case of the lease with plaintiffs in 1952, and in no instance is there a resolution of the Board of Directors. It would be difficult to find a more suitable occasion for application of the well settled rule that when, in the usual course of the business of a corporation, an officer has been allowed to manage its affairs, his authority to represent the corporation may be implied from the manner in which he has been permitted by the directors to transact its business. See 7 R.C.L. 623, Sec. 620; also, City Savings Bank & Trust Co. v. Shreveport Brick Co. [454]*454172 La. 471, 134 So. 397; Scharfenstein & Sons v. Item Co., 174 La. 794, 141 So. 463; Slagle v. Peyton, 182 La. 358, 162 So. 12, and other authorities therein cited; cf. Morgan v. Cedar Grove Ice Co., 215 La. 741, 41 So.2d 521; Acadian Production Corp. of Louisiana v. Tennant, 222 La. 653, 63 So.2d 343.
For the reasons assigned, the judgment appealed from is affirmed.
SIMON, J., absent.
. The 1952 lease contained no exact dimensions ; however, a map filed as an exhibit by plaintiff shows that, according to the boundaries recited in the lease, Friedman’s frontage on Greenwood Road measured almost 260 feet, Arnold’s, about 201 feet, and the joint tract frontage, 138 feet.