175 P. 133 | Or. | 1918
“Every blacksmith, wagon-maker, automobile repairer and machinist who has expended labor, skill and material on any chattel at the request of its owner, # * shall have a lien upon said chattel for the contract price for such expenditure, or in the absence of such contract price, for the reasonable worth of such expenditure, for the period of one year from and after such expenditure, notwithstanding the fact that the possession of such chattel has been surrendered to the owner thereof.”
“In order to make such lien effectual the lien claimant shall, within sixty days of the date of the delivery of such chattel to the owner thereof, or his duly authorized agent, file in the office of the county clerk of the county in which said labor, skill and materials were expended on such chattel, a lien notice. * # ’ ’
That statute goes on to prescribe the form of the notice, and it was followed in this instance, as the record shows. The question to be determined is: What is the proper signification to be assigned to the words “sixty days from the date of the delivery of such chattel to the owner thereof?” The testimony fairly shows that this work was done in pursuance of the contract made in December and that it was continued until the relation was ended by common consent of the parties at the end of March following. As we glean from the testimony, the evident purpose of the parties was for the plaintiffs to keep the machine in running order until the logging job then on hand was completed, when the contract between them should be completed by a systematic repair of the engine. While this contract was in force the plaintiffs had in a sense a modified possession of the machine. They certainly occupied toward it a relation different from that of any stranger. They could not have been held guilty of trespass in repairing it during that time. For the purpose of mending the machine the then owner granted to them a qualified custody of it. When they mutually ended their contract the plaintiffs gave up. this conventional possession of the chattel and sur
In brief, here was a single contract under which the plaintiffs from time to time expended labor and materials upon a chattel, which gave them a lien, as the statute expressly says. Incidental to the performance of such services, they had a qualified possession of
Reversed. Decree Rendered.