Galvin v. Southern Hotel Corp.

164 F.2d 791, 1947 U.S. App. LEXIS 1988
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
DecidedDecember 15, 1947
DocketNo. 5650
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 164 F.2d 791 (Galvin v. Southern Hotel Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Galvin v. Southern Hotel Corp., 164 F.2d 791, 1947 U.S. App. LEXIS 1988 (4th Cir. 1947).

Opinion

SOPER, Circuit Judge.

Upon the first appeal in this case we set aside the forfeiture of the lease of a hotel in Norfolk of which the United States had taken possession on December 17, 1943, in proceedings directed to the condemnation of the leasehold interest, as will appear from the opinion of this court, 154 F.2d 970. The only default of the lessee was the failure to pay additional rental to the lessor in the sum of $9,015.17, based on the [792]*792gross receipts of the lessee for the year 1943; and as the lessor held bonds of the value of $12,754.39 as security for the lessee’s performance of the lease, and as the rental during the Government’s occupancy was secure and the District Court had the power and duty to fix the value of the interest taken by the United States and to distribute the proceeds thereof to the persons entitled, we concluded that the rights of the lessor were amply protected without forfeiture of the lease and that the lessee should be given an opportunity to show what compensation he was entitled to receive from the United States for the taking of the leasehold. It was then obvious that the great demand for hotel accommodations due to the emergency of war gave the leasehold interest taken by the United States a value greatly in excess of the rental named in the lease when it was executed in 1934.

On December 16, 1945, while the appeal was pending and the judgment of forfeiture was still in effect, the occupancy of the United States terminated and possession of the premises was surrendered to the lessor. The opinion of this court was handed down on April 9, 1946, and shortly thereafter the lessor petitioned the court to declare a new forfeiture of the lease since the lessee was still in default in the payment of the additional rental for 1943; but at or about the same time, the lessor offered to restore possession of the hotel to the lessee upon the payment of the arrearage. The lessee on his part took the position in his ansv/er to the petition for forfeiture that the occupancy of the hotel by the lessor upon its vacation by the United States constituted a breach of the lease and he asked for damages therefor; but he did not at any time offer to pay the rent in arrears or to take possession of and manage the hotel for the balance of the term which ran to March 1, 1948. Indeed he testified that the operation of the hotel by him during the remainder of the term would have caused him a serious loss.

During the occupancy by the United States and for some additional time, the condemnation proceedings to fix the value of the leasehold taken by the United States were pending- They were not finally concluded until February 15, 1947, when the United States and the parties to the lease agreed to the amounts to be paid by the United States. In accord with this agreement the court adjudged that the sum of $110,000 was full compensation for the use and occupancy by the United States of the hotel and the contents for the two year period, and that the United States should pay the additional sum of $27,500 for the destruction and conversion of personal property in the hotel during the period of its possession. Of the sum of $110,000 so adjudged, the United States had already paid $42,000, that is, $21,000 for each of the two years on account of the rental to the lessor and the balance, that is $68,000, and the additional sum of $27,500 were paid into the registry of the court to await its further order.

The court considered the distribution of the monies after taking evidence and hearing the argument of the parties to this appeal, and decreed (1) that out of the sum of $68,000 the lessor should be paid $25,000, that is, $12,500 for each of the two years of Government occupancy in lieu of the additional rental prescribed in the original lease of 12i/£% of the gross receipts of the lessee in excess of $75,000, and that the lessee should receive the remainder of the money, that is, $43,000; (2) that the less- or should receive the entire sum of $27,500 paid by the United States for.damage to and loss of the contents of the hotel; and, (3) that by reason of the breach of the lease by the lessee it should be declared forfeited as of December 17, 1945, the day on which the United States vacated the premises, and that the lessee should recover nothing for the resumption of possession of the hotel by the lessor on that date. The lessee has appealed from all of these conclusions.

In order to determine how the sum of $68,000 should be divided in harmony with the provision of the lease that required the lessee to pay as additional rental 12^2% of the annual gross receipts of the hotel in excess of $75,000, the judge took into account the full occupancy which the hotel would have enjoyed under private management. He made the finding, which [793]*793was amply supported by the evidence, that at the rates approved by the Office of Price Administration the gross receipts ■during the period would have amounted to at least $175,000 per year, and he concluded that the lessor was therefore entitled to the additional yearly rental of $12,500 or $25,-000 in all. The sum of $43,000 remaining was awarded to the lessee for his share of the value of the leasehold. We think that this allotment was correct.

In opposition the lessee contends in the first place that the lessor was not entitled to any share of the putative gross receipts because there were in fact no gross receipts or receipts of any kind from the occupants who used the rooms free of charge for the benefit and with the consent of the United States during its tenancy; and in the second place that if the lessor is to be given any share in the money in addition to the yearly rental of $21,000, it should bear the same ratio to the lessee’s share as the net earnings of the lessee in 1943, when also the rooms in the hotel were fully occupied, bore to the amount of the additional rent payable in that year to the less- or. On the latter theory the sum of $68,000 would have been divided, one-seventh to the lessor and six-sevenths to the lessee.

Neither of these contentions can be sustained. That which was taken by the United States from the lessee was the right to occupy and use the hotel and its contents for two years, that is, a part of his leasehold interest; and it was necessary, in order to fix the sum to be paid to him by the United States, to ascertain the market value of the interest taken. That value necessarily depended not only upon the character of the building as a hotel but also upon the probable demand for hotel accommodations during the period; and the sum arrived at was subject to the obligation of the lessee to pay to the lessor the rent specified in the lease which included not only the fixed rental of $21,000 per year but also 12i/¿% of the gross receipts in excess of $75,000 per year. It is true that the amount paid by the United States for the taking represented the market value of the two year leasehold and was not composed in any part of gross receipts; but the amount was arrived at, as the testimony of the expert witnesses shows, by estimating what the gross receipts and expenses of the hotel would have been if the lessee had continued to operate it-What these gross receipts would have been was easily susceptible of calculation because the hotel rates were fixed by public authority and the amount of occupancy, as all the witnesses agreed, would not have been less than 90%. The figure of $175,000, adopted by the District Judge, was therefore conservative.

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164 F.2d 791, 1947 U.S. App. LEXIS 1988, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/galvin-v-southern-hotel-corp-ca4-1947.