Levy v. S. H. Kress & Co.

285 F. 836, 1922 U.S. App. LEXIS 2014
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
DecidedDecember 23, 1922
DocketNos. 5924, 5925
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 285 F. 836 (Levy v. S. H. Kress & Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Levy v. S. H. Kress & Co., 285 F. 836, 1922 U.S. App. LEXIS 2014 (8th Cir. 1922).

Opinion

SANBORN, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from a decree that the plaintiff, the lessor "of two lots and a three-story building in Oklahoma City, under a lease for 99 years, which contained an agreement by the lessee, the defendant, a corporation, that if it tore down the building it would rebuild the walls and roof of value and strength equal to or greater than the wall and roof removed, and under a bond of $20,000 made by the lessee to so rebuild, was entitled to no relief under the facts of this case, on account of the lessee’s failure to rebuild the [837]*837east wall of the old building, which it tore down, and that the title to the leasehold estate be quieted in the defendant, the lessee.

The plaintiff brought her action for possession of the leased premises for the failure of the lessee to rebuild the wall, under the familiar provision of the lease to the effect that, if the lessee failed to comply with the terms of the lease, the lessor might declare the lease at an end and take possession of the premises. The lessee defended on the grounds that the lease, under a proper construction of its terms, did not require it to rebuild the wall, that it had given a bond to rebuild it, that the plaintiff was estopped from maintaining any claim for relief by her grantors’ (the former lessees’) failure to demand and insist upon the rebuilding of the wall when the defendant constructed its new building, by the statute of limitations of Oklahoma, by her grantors* and by her own collection of the rents, some $700 per month, after the new building was built, and by the failure early and persistently to press their claim.

When the case was called for trial, and the court found the equitable defenses pleaded, it transferred it from the law to the equity docket, and tried it as a suit in equity, without objection by either party. Our of abundance of caution the plaintiff took an appeal and sued out a writ of error to reverse the decree. The decree is reviewable by appeal, and it is not reviewable by writ of error. The writ is therefore dismissed. The defendant has not appealed, the rulings of the court against it are not challenged, and the alleged, errors assigned by the plaintiff are all embraced in her claim that the trial court erred in its ruling that the breach by the defendant of the agreement to build the east wall was waived by the grantors of the plaintiff and by the plaintiff, by their acceptance of the rents, as they knew that the defendant did not intend to construct that wall, by their silence and delay in demanding and enforcing their claims for avoidance of the lease while the new building was in course of construction in 1914 and thereafter until about the time this suit was brought in April, 1920.

The principal established facts, upon which the defendant relies to sustain the finding of the court below that the plaintiff was equitably estopped from avoiding the lease and recovering possession of the leased premises on account of the defendant’s failure to build the east wall, are these:

While the defendant, on February 2, 1914, gave its bond required by the lease in the sum of $20,000 to rebuild within a reasonable time the walls and roof of the building which it was then about to tear down, it submitted to Mr. Hendrickson in February or March, 1914, the blueprints and specifications of its proposed building, which disclosed the fact that there was to be no wall on the east side of the leased premises. On March 10, 1914, Hendrickson, then a lessor, wrote to the defendant, called its attention in his letter to that fact, and asked if leaving-out that wall would not be -a violation of the lease and the bond. The defendant answered that it would put a line of columns on or near the east line of the premises, and that its contention was that this would be a compliance with the terms of the lease, and-it requested Hendrickson, if he intended to take the position that under the lease and bond [838]*838he was entitled to a solid wall, to. so state, as the defendant intended soon to let its contract for the building, and to construct it. On May 1, 1914, Hendrickson wrote to the attorneys of the defendant that he felt sure that the lease would not permit the defendant to leave out this east wall. At that time the building was under construction, not completed, and an east wall could have been built conveniently. About May 20, 1914, while the building was still incomplete, Hendrickson protested to and demanded of the'defendant’s architects that the east wall be built. The defendant did not build that wall. Hendrickson, one of the original lessors, collected the cash rent under the lease until June 9, 1918, when he conveyed the property, subject to the lease, to the plaintiff, who collected the rent from that time until April, 1920. On June 1, 1920, the parties to this suit stipulated that the defendant should pay and the plaintiff should receive the cash rent from April, 1920, as it became due, without prejudice to the rights of _either party to this suit, and that course has since been pursued. Prior to 1913, the defendant purchased the leasehold estate and paid $60,000 for it, and in 1913 and 1914 it spent about $50,000 in the construction of the new building on the leased lots, which is more valuable than the old one was, and the leasehold estate is now worth about $100,000. The cost of constructing the east wall in accordance with the terms of the lease would be from $3,000 to $4,000.

The court below held that the lease and bond required the defendant to build the east wall,' and that the defendant failed to comply with that requirement by its failure to construct that wall, and this court concurs in these opinions. The court below also held that by the facts which have been recited the plaintiff was estopped from enforcing a forfeiture of the lease and recovering possession of the premises, and that the defendant was entitled to a decree quieting the title to the leasehold in itself. A careful examination of the evidence and the arguments and authorities presented by the elaborate briefs of counsel has failed to convince that the plaintiff waived or was estopped from enforcing its claim to equitable relief by her silence, delay, acts, or omissions, or by those of Hendrickson, one of the original lessors. However, it has also become satisfied that a decree fori the permanent possession of the leased premises, which would entail a loss of something like $100,000 upon the defendant, in order to enforce'a right or equity of the plaintiff to a wall that will cost about $3,500, would be so inequitable that a court of chancery ought not to render it, unless it finds it impossible in any other way to preserve and enforce the right and equity of the plaintiff.

The relief which a court of equity may grant, however, is not limited to that which one or more of the parties to the suit may pray for. It should not be harsh or oppressive on the defendant or in any other manner work injustice. 1 Pomeroy’s Jurisprudence, § 400. And a court of equity may vary, qualify, restrain, and modify the remedy it applies, so as to do equity and avoid inequity to mutual' and adverse claims and the substantial rights of the parties. Jones v. Missouri-Edison Electric Co., 144 Fed. 765, 781, 75 C. C. A. 631.

While the defendant in its answer relies and its attorneys insist upon [839]

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286 F. 813 (Sixth Circuit, 1923)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
285 F. 836, 1922 U.S. App. LEXIS 2014, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/levy-v-s-h-kress-co-ca8-1922.