252 Pa. 461 | Pa. | 1916
Opinion by
By the common law when an execution was levied upon the tenant’s goods and chattels, the landlord lost his rent, this for the reason that, once levied, the goods and chattels are thereafter, until sold, in the custody of the law, and the right of the landlord to enter and dis-train no longer exists. In relief of the landlord the Act. of March 21, 1772, 1 Sm. L. 370, was passed, providing that goods and chattels levied in execution should thereafter he subject to the payment of one year’s rent for the premises on which they were seized, and directing that the sheriff should, after sale of the goods, pay to the landlord such rent so due. It will be observed that the relief given by this act extended only to cases where the landlord’s goods had been taken in execution and the right of entry by the landlord for the purpose of distress was lost. And so the law remained, limiting the relief to cases of execution, until the passage of the Act of May 26, 1891, P. L. 122, which extended the relief to all cases where the tenant makes an assignment for the benefit of creditors of goods and chattels upon the demised premises liable to distress. This later act provides that in such case the landlord shall first be entitled to receive out of the proceeds of the sale of such goods by the assignee the rent due him at the time of making the assignment, not exceeding one year’s rent. During all this period, from 1772 to 1891, the landlord was denied preference for the rent due him, except in the one case where the tenant’s goods had been seized in execution, and yet his right of entry for purpose of distraint .was as effectually taken from him by a legally executed