Orchard Shopping Center, Inc. v. Campo

485 N.E.2d 1248, 138 Ill. App. 3d 656, 93 Ill. Dec. 38, 1985 Ill. App. LEXIS 2731
Appellate Court of Illinois·Decided November 19, 1985·No. 5-84-0745·Published·Cited by 14 cases

Opinion

PRESIDING JUSTICE JONES

delivered the opinion of the court:

The plaintiff, Orchard Shopping Center, Inc., brought this action to recover unpaid rent in the amount of $16,300 and attorney fees and costs from the defendants Michael Campo and John Rimar. The action was based on a written lease agreement between the plaintiff as lessor and Michael Campo and Gerald Hillyard as lessees. Gerald Hillyard died prior to the commencement of the suit. The plaintiff alleged in its first amended complaint that Gerald Hillyard and Michael Campo had assigned their interest to John Rimar. Following a bench trial the trial court found that there had been an oral modification of the lease between plaintiff and defendant Campo, which had resulted in a rescission of the lease agreement. The trial court found further that plaintiff’s actions estopped their claim regarding defendant Campo. The court found the defendant Rimar liable for damages during the period in which he was in possession of the estate. The court entered judgment against plaintiff in favor of defendant Campo and in favor of plaintiff against the defendant Rimar in the amount of $1,300 and denied the plaintiff’s claim for attorney fees. The trial court also entered judgment in favor of the defendant Rimar against the defendant Campo on the counterclaim of the latter. The defendant Rimar’s post-trial motion for modification of the judgment, by crediting him with a $650 deposit, was denied. The plaintiff brought this appeal raising three issues: (1) whether the trial court’s findings that defendant Campo was released from liability and that plaintiff was estopped from its claim against him was against the manifest weight of the evidence; (2) whether the trial court erred in finding defendant liable only for the time he was in possession of the property because, the plaintiff urges, the agreement with Rimar was an assignment rather than a sublease; and (3) whether the denial of attorney fees and costs was erroneous. No appeal has been taken concerning the part of the judgment dealing with the counterclaim.

The five-year lease, effective June 15, 1978, between plaintiff and Hillyard and Campo, d/b/a Quality Meat and Produce, was executed on May 16, 1978. In paragraph 36 the lease provides that it “contains the entire agreement between the parties and executory agreement made hereafter shall be ineffective to change, modify, or discharge this lease in whole or in part, unless such executory agreement is in writing and signed by the party against whom enforcement of the change, modification or discharge is sought.”

At the hearing conducted on September 5, 1984, the plaintiff called the defendant Campo as an adverse witness pursuant to section 2 — 1102 of the Code of Civil Procedure (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1983, ch. 110, par. 2 — 1102). He testified that he and Hillyard had rented the premises in question to operate a butcher shop. After nine months of operation, the butcher shop did not generate enough income to support “two families,” whereupon Campo sold his share of the business to Hillyard. The defendant, likewise, called the defendant Rimar as an adverse witness. He testified concerning the “Sublease Agreement,” prepared by his attorney, between himself as “sublessee” and Hillyard as “sublessor” of the premises of the butcher shop. Rimar’s son had operated a butcher shop in the premises between approximately December of 1979 and November of 1980, at which time the witness had executed a seven-day option to cancel the “Sublease Agreement” by presenting the cancellation notice to Hillyard.

Frank King, an owner and officer of the plaintiff corporation, testified concerning the “Lessor’s Consent to Sublease,” dated December 15, 1979, by which the plaintiff consented to the “subleasing” to Rimar of the premises in question. He testified further that the monthly rental for the property in question was $650 and that rent had been paid from September 15, 1978, to August 15, 1980. He had, he said, received a check for $1,300 on October 8, 1980, that had been returned for insufficient funds. That check would have paid the rent through October 15, 1980. Once the property became vacant he received inquiries from persons interested in renting it, but none of them resulted in rental of the property prior to October of 1982, he said, when the Son-Life Fellowship Church went into possession of it. He testified that during the period of vacancy he had not refused to rent to anyone, that during that time Son-Life Fellowship Church, which already rented certain space from plaintiff, had expressed the wish to the plaintiff to rent additional space, and that the plaintiff would have preferred high-volume retail-sales lessees in the shopping center.

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Orchard Shopping Center, Inc. v. Campo, 485 N.E.2d 1248, 138 Ill. App. 3d 656, 93 Ill. Dec. 38, 1985 Ill. App. LEXIS 2731 (Ill. Ct. App. 1985).

485 N.E.2d 1248 (Orchard Shopping Center, Inc. v. Campo) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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