58 Mich. 578 | Mich. | 1886
The bill was filed in the court below on the 19th day of July, 1883, to compel the reformation and correction of a written lease executed between the parties and bearing date April 14, 1872. Complainant alleges that on or about the 14th day of April, 1872, she entered into an oral contract with the defendant, in which she agreed to lease to him, for five dollars a year, a certain lot of land, twenty by thirty feet in size, situated in Lapeer county, for and
The testimony is conflicting, and no useful purpose will be subserved by a review of the testimony given by the different
But aside from this, I think she has failed to show conclusively that the five dollai’s was to be paid annually. Her own statement of the verbal contx-act is this, as elicited by her counsel on her examination in chief:
*582 “Question. Now you may state, Mrs. Hoard, what the terms of that verbal contract -were.
Answer. Well, he wanted to lease a piece of land. He had been for two or three years, or a year or two, boarding with us; and I remember’, before this building was put up, of picking berries — strawberries—there, and he came over there and marked off the ground. That was the summer before. ‘ I suppose,’ says he, ‘ if I set my office here I would want it to come back as far as this.’ I says: ‘You would like, then, to set your office on the strawberry bed ? ’ And he says, ‘You are going to take it up?’ And I says, ‘Yes.’ And he went on, and wanted to know every little while what I would take to let him put his office there. ‘ Now, Mrs. Hoard,’ he says, ‘ it rests waiting for you to say what you will talie for land enough do set my office on.’ He wanted, I think, twenty by thirty feet; and I asked him to set it a little below where it is now. There was a barn in the corner of the lot, and he objected to it on account of the barn; and then he come in, and he says: ‘ I can get lumber and shingles of those that owe me, and all I would have to buy would be my glass and nails and paint; and if I can get the land to set it on, I will build it.’ Well, we talked, as ■we had several times before; and I says: ‘ Dice Clark got five dollars for setting a blacksmith shop on the corner of that field over there [telling him where], before the railroad was built.’ The railroad lias now cut the end of the field off; it is used for a garden. ‘Well,’ ho says, ‘now will you take five dollars?’ I said: ‘Yes, we will take five dollars, and you can put up your office.’ ‘All right,’ says he. Well, it run along, and he went and got his material together, and put up his office the next spring.”
It will be noticed that nothing is said here about its being five dollars annually. In the next question she is asked what this five dollars was for, and she then says the use of the land was to be five dollars annually. In appears that in the years 1875 or 1876 the complainant and her husband rented a portion of this building from defendant, and complainant paid him forty-five dollars for the use thereof, without making any claim that she had an offset by way of rent for the use of the land. Nothing further need be said upon the subject of the rent. As before stated, the lease bears date the 14th day of April, 1872. The court will take judicial notice that this
I am satisfied from the evidence that the consideration of the lease was to be merely nominal, and that the particular inducement for complainant to enter into the lease was the benefit which she expected would accrue to her in her business of hotel-keeping, in providing for and entertaining as guests those who visited the defendant from a distance for treatment. The facts on this point are that Dr. Stone was a physician of large practice, having many patients from a distance. Tie had, for several years prior to 1872, had his office at complainant’s hotel, and boarded there, and his patients, during that time, generally stopped at this hotel while being treated by him. In 1872 his business was increasing, and he concluded to build an office, and wished to buy the land in , question, which is near to complainant’s hotel, and on the same lot, for the purpose of erecting his office on it. Complainant did not wish to sell the land, and Dr. Stone then opened negotiations for the purchase of a piece of land near another hotel in the village of Metamora, known as the “ Ackerman House.” Complainant was anxkras that Dr. Stone’s office should not be located where his patients would naturally stop at the other hotel, and the arrangement was then made that she would lease this land to the defendant for a nominal consideration so long as he continued to use the building erected on it as an office. The real consideration for the leasing of this land was the benefit that complainant would derive from having defendant’s office located where his patients would naturally lodge at complainant’s hotel.
But these facts, in connection with the testimony, are also conclusive to my mind that there is a mistake in the written lease in the term limited thereby. The lease reads that the land is demised “for and during the time the said building shall be owned by the said party of the second part.” This
The decree of the court below must be reversed, and a ■decree entered here reforming said lease in the particular above specified. The complainant will recover her costs in .this Court.