129 Ga. 62 | Ga. | 1907
The ease made by the petition was substantially this: The owner of two adjoining lots leased them separately to the plaintiff and the defendant, the lease to the plaintiff being prior to that of the defendant. TJpon the lot demised to the plaintiff was a three-room tenement, which was used as a dwelling-house. The only means of lighting and ventilating two rooms thereof was by a single window in each room, which overlooked the premises demised to the defendant. The defendant, being a manufacturing corporation dealing in lumber, piled a quantity of lumber on the lot rented by it in such a manner as to obstruct the light and air necessary for the use and enjoyment of the tenement by the other tenant, and to cause rain-water to drip into the house, rendering the house damp, unwholesome, unhealthy, and uncomfortable. Other matters were also alleged, which will be noticed in a discussion of the special demurrers filed. The defendant demurred both generally and specially to the petition; the demurrers were sustained, and the petition was dismissed.
The complaining tenant was a tenant by the year, and does not claim an express grant to any easement of light and air. Whatever right he may have to prevent his neighbor tenant from obstructing his window must be founded upon an implied grant of an easement in the use and enjoyment of light and ventilation over the adjoining land of his landlord at the time of his lease. There is much conflict in the American cases on the question of implied grant of these easements. In many jurisdictions it is held that
We have thus far discussed the matter as if the complaint of the tenant were against his landlord, instead of against a tenant who subsequently rented from his landlord. It is not charged in the petition that the common landlord consented, expressly or impliedly, to the commission of the acts complained' of, or connived thereat. From the doctrine that a landlord is not responsible for the acts of strangers, it would follow that a tortious act done by one tenant to another tenant of a common landlord,, without the authority, consent, or connivance of the landlord, is not the latter’s tort, but the tort of him who does the act. Perry v. Wall, 68 Ga. 70. However, if the common landlord can not use his adjoining land in such a manner as to shut out necessary light and air from a dwelling-house which he has rented, one who thereafter rents the adjoining land has no greater right or privilege in respect thereto than his landlord possessed. It follows, therefore, that the defendant can not justify its act under the lease.
The petition should not have been dismissed on general demurrer, for another reason. It was alleged that the lumber was piled in such a way as to cause the rain-water to be thrown through the window of the plaintiff’s bedroom, “thereby wetting petitioner’s bedroom floor and his bedding and bedroom furnishings, and rendering petitioner’s said house, and bedroom especially, damp, close, stuffy, unwholesome and unhealthy, and exceedingly uncomfortable, to his great annoyance/ and to the disturbance and
There were several special demurrers to the petition. One was directed to the allegations respecting the plaintiff’s condition in life, and the nature of his vocation. Simply that the plaintiff is a poor man, and his employment is that of a night watchman, which requires him to sleep in the day, would not make the. defendant liable in damages for the interference with his slumbers caused by the noises incident to the operation of a lumber yard. Hence the 16th and 20th paragraphs were subject to the special demurrers aimed at them. The allegations that the plaintiff had previously occupied the same house as a tenant for many years in the past, and was attached to the same, was entirely irrelevant, and properly stricken on demurrer. The allegation in the 17th paragraph, that the plaintiff had renewed his lease for another term, does not aid his case. When he renewed the lease he took the premises as he found them, and can not complain of conditions existing at the time of the renewal of his lease contract. The 22nd paragraph of the petition declared that the various acts and deeds set forth and complained of, both in themselves and' in the intent with which they were done, constituted aggravating circumstances entitling petitioner to additional damages for which he sues. The mere wrongful obstruction of the plaintiff’s light, without more, would not make the defendant liable in punitive damages. But if, as charged in the petition, the lumber was piled so as not only to exclude light and air from the plaintiff’s dwelling, but also to throw the rain-water into his bedroom, and this was done by the defendant for the purpose of harassing the plaintiff with a view of causing him to abandon his lease, that the defendant might get possession of the property, it would be in the province of. the jury to allow punitive damages. The other special demurrers to which no special reference has been made should have been overruled.
Judgment reversed.