Semple v. Schwarz

109 S.W. 633, 130 Mo. App. 65, 1908 Mo. App. LEXIS 193
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedMarch 3, 1908
StatusPublished
Cited by21 cases

This text of 109 S.W. 633 (Semple v. Schwarz) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Missouri Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Semple v. Schwarz, 109 S.W. 633, 130 Mo. App. 65, 1908 Mo. App. LEXIS 193 (Mo. Ct. App. 1908).

Opinion

BLAND, P. J.

(after stating the facts). — 1. The deed of Mrs. Schwarz’s immediate grantor was duly acknowledged and recorded in the recorder’s office in the city of St. Louis at the time she and her husband bought the lot in question. This deed imported notice of its contents to them and all other persons (R. S. 1899, sec. 924), therefore, defendants must be deemed to have purchased the lot with notice of the covenants and restrictions. [Geer v. Lumber and Mining Co., 184 Mo. 84.]

2. The deeds of Fullerton and all those of his tes[73]*73tamentary trustee, to lots fronting on McPherson avenue and platted in Fullerton’s Second Westminster Place Addition, contain covenants and restrictions materially different from those contained in their deeds conveying lots in the first addition. Permission is granted in deeds to lots in the second addition to erect apartment houses on the lots, and the evidence shows that a large apartment house has been erected on the corner of Newstead and McPherson avenues and that four or five different families live in this house; that next door west of the apartment house is Miss Crump’s hoarding house at which from twenty to twenty-five boarders take their meals daily. Defendants contend that the property fronting on McPherson avenue was included in the first plat under the head of “Fullerton’s Westminster Place.” All evidence in respect to Fullerton’s Second Addition was excluded by the court, and we .think properly, for the reason the lots in the Second Addition were hot laid off until long after those in the first were laid off and platted, and the fact that Fullerton called one the first and the other the Second Addition shows conclusively that they were regarded by him as separate and distinct additions to the city of St. Louis..

3. Defendants insist that the evidence fails to show Dr. Schwarz is carrying on any business at his residence on lot No. 18 that what he does there is in the exercise of his calling as a physician and is professional work, not a business calling or vocation within the meaning of the restrictions. Webster defines business as follows: “1. That which busies one, or that which engages the time, attention, or labor of any one, as his principal concern or interest, whether for a longer or shorter time; constant employment, regular occupation; as, the business of life. (2) Any particular occupation or employment engaged in for livelihood or gain, as agriculture, trade, art, or a profession.” This defini[74]*74tion is approvingly cited in the case of Trustees of Columbia College v. Lynch, 46 How. Pr. 275. In Beickler v. Guenther, 96 N. W. (Ia.) 896, it is said: “To ‘engage in business’ is uniformly construed as signifying to follow that employment or occupation which occupies the time, attention, and labor for the purpose of a livelihood or profit.” In Ragsdale v. Nagle, 106 Cal. 332, it was contended that abstracting was not a business but a profession or trade. The court held that it was a business. In Hacheny & Beno v. Leary, 12 Ore. 40, it was held that taking an application for insurance and transmitting it to the company was doing business. In Rolls v. Miller, 27 Ch. D. 71, the lease of a house contained a covenant that the lessee should not use, exercise, or carry on upon the premises any trade or business of any description whatsoever; it was held (affirming the decision of Pearson, J., “that a charitable institution called a ‘Home for Working Girls,’ where the inmates were provided with board and lodging’, whether any payment was taken or not, was a business, and came within the restrictions of the covenant.” The Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales was incorporated for the purpose of reporting the decisions of the superior courts of law and equity. It was held that it was incorporated to do business, in The matter of the Duty on the Estate of the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting, 58 Law Jr. (1889) 90. In Kemp v. Sober, 20 Law Jr. (1850) 602, in the conveyance of a house at Kemp Town, Brighton, a covenant was contained that the purchaser should not carry on any trade, business, or calling in the said, house, or permit the same to be used to the annoyance, nuisance, or injury of any of the houses in Kemp Town; “Held, that keeping a girls’ school was a breach of the covenant; and that the court would interfere by injunction, notwithstanding other schools had been per[75]*75mitted to be carried on upon the same property in houses which were subject to a similar covenant.”

Under the Massachusetts exemption laws it was held, in Goddard v. Chaffee, 2 All. 395, that the violin and bow of a debtor, whose business is that of a musician, were exempt from attachment, and in the course of the opinion it is said: “Business is a word of large signification, and denotes the employment or occupation in which a person is engaged to procure a living,” quoted in the case of Hardware Co. v. Manufacturing Co., 86 Tex. 153. See also Abel v. State, 90 Ala. 1. c. 633. In Netterville v. Barber, 52 Miss. 1. c. 171, it is said: “The primary signification of the word (business) is employment — That which employs time, attention, and labor.’ ” The term “profession” signifies an employment requiring a learned education, as those of law and physics, and is applied to a calling which requires learning and special preparation in the acquirement of such knowledge and skill. [Commonwealth ex rel. v. Mayor of Philadelphia, 10 Pa. C. C. 1. c. 147.] The term “profession,” in its broader meaning is defined by Webster to be “the occupation, if not mechanical, or agricultural, or the like, to which one devotes one’s self; the business which one professes to understand, and to follow for a subsistence; calling; vocation; employment;” quoted in Betz v. Maier, 33 S. W. (Tex.) 710.

In the case of Holy Trinity Church v. United States, 143 U. S. 457, it is said: “The act of February 26, 1885, ‘to prohibit the importation and migration of foreigners and aliens under contract or agreement to perform labor in the United States, its Territories, and the District of Columbia,’ 23 Stat. 332, c. 164, does not apply‘to a contract between an alien, residing out of the United States, and a religious society incorporated under the laws of a State, whereby he engages to [76]*76remove to the United States and to enter into the service of the society as its rector or minister.”

In United States v. Laws, 163 U. S. 1. c. 266, is tbe following: “One definition of a profession is an ‘employment, especially an employment requiring a learned education, as those of divinity, law and physic.’ [Worcester’s Dictionary, title profession.] In the Century Dictionary the definition of the word ‘profession’ is given, among others, as “A vocation in which a professed knowledge of some department of science or learning is used by its practical application to the affairs of others, either in advising, guiding, or teaching them, or in serving their interests or welfare in the practice of an art founded on it. Formerly, theology, law and medicine were specifically known as the professions ; but as the applications of science and learning are extended to other departments of affairs, other vocations also receive the name. The word implies professed attainments in special knowledge as distinguished from mere skill.

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Bluebook (online)
109 S.W. 633, 130 Mo. App. 65, 1908 Mo. App. LEXIS 193, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/semple-v-schwarz-moctapp-1908.