143 Ga. 403 | Ga. | 1915
(After stating the foregoing facts.) Courts do not make contracts for parties. Where a written contract is plain and unambiguous, it is' the only evidence of what the parties intended and understood by it. No issue is raised in the pleadings that the written contract did not express the intention and purpose of the parties to it. The rights of the parties primarily depend upon a construction of their contract as creating the relation of vendor and vendee or that of landlord and tenant. It seems to be a rule of all but universal application that a provision in an instrument of lease, giving the lessee an .option to purchase the reversion in the premises should he so desire, in no way affects the relation of landlord and tenant, or the latter’s liability for rent. 2 Tiffany’s Landlord and Tenant, § 256. The parties designated
Counsel for the defendant in error, in their brief, place great reliance on the case of Lytle v. Scottish American Mortgage Company, 122 Ga. 458 (50 S. E. 402), as demanding a construction that the contract in this case created the relation of vendor and vendee. In the Lytle case the parties thereto characterized their contract as a "land contract.” That contract called for ten payments aggregating $1,260, designated as purchase-money, and ten payments aggregating $2,750, designated as rental, and provided that upon the payment of these sums conveyances in fee should be executed; and it was held that such contract created the relation of vendor and vendee, and not that of lessor and lessee. The distinction between the contract in that ease and the one under consideration is obvious. In the former the person contracting for the land contracted to pay a certain amount as purchase-money and a certain amount as rent, and, after obtaining possession, made payments of both purchase-money and rent installments. The landowner claimed a forfeiture on account of a failure to make these payments under the terms of the contract, and the issues in that case revolved around the effort to declare a forfeiture. In the instant case, according to the contract, no money was contracted to
Judgment reversed.