152 P.2d 805 | Kan. | 1944
The opinion of the court was delivered by
This was an action on two promissory notes which had been assigned to the plaintiff by the payee after their maturity.
The defense was that the maker had been relieved of their payment by a compromise settlement with the payee which he had performed.
“All the rent for a farm, including pasture, is a lien on the crops raised thereon by a tenant where the entire tract is leased under one contract for a share of the crops and $5 an acre for the pasture.” (Syl. ¶ 1.)
See, also, Shell v. Guthrie, 129 Kan. 632, 284 Pac. 420; Schmitz v. Stockman, 151 Kan. 891, 894, 101 P. 2d 962.
The satisfaction of the landlord’s lien consumed the entire proceeds of the tenant’s share of the wheat, and left an aggregate unpaid balance of $1,139.76 on its notes against Hipes.
On the assumption that by the interposition of the landlord’s lien which deprived the bank of the proceeds of the wheat the compromise and settlement between Hipes and the bank was ineffective, the bank assigned the Hipes notes to plaintiff and she brought suit thereon. On the issues joined no material dispute of fact arose. The controversy below, as here on appeal, was whether the failure of the bank to get the beneficial proceeds of the wheat constituted a breach of the compromise and settlement between Plipes and the bank.
The plaintiff appeals, contending that the compromise agreement with the bank as plaintiff’s assignor was vitiated through the fault of Hipes in not paying his cash rent, which failure alone prevented the bank from receiving the proceeds of the wheat. She also urges that the attaching of the landlord’s statutory lien for the unpaid rent was not within the contemplation of the bank and Hipes when they made their compromise agreement.
Plaintiff stresses the elementary point that to make an accord effectual there must be satisfaction, and that there could be no satisfaction since the bank was deprived of the wheat delivered at the elevator to its account, that in effect Hipes did not keep his part of the agreement when by his own fault he failed to pay his cash rent, which failure caused the landlord’s lien to attach.
There is a specious plausibility to this argument, but we think it is basically untenable. The landlord’s lien is a long-standing rule of elementary Kansas law. Almost everybody is aware of it, certainly every country banker. No business man of any prudence will contract for any part of a crop grown by a tenant farmer, without taking the precaution to assure himself that the landlord’s claim for rent (like the thresherman’s claim for his labor) has either been paid or that satisfactory provision has been made for its payment, so that the crop he contracts for will not be subjected to one of these statutory liens. (Scully v. Porter, 57 Kan. 322, 325, 326, 46 Pac. 313; Maelzer v. Swan, 75 Kan. 496, 498, 89 Pac. 1037.)
Moreover, at the time of the compromise and settlement the bank knew of Hipes’ financial difficulties. It knew he had other indebtednesses than those evidenced by his promissory notes which the bank held and which he could not pay according to their tenor. Under such circumstances it is quite just to say that the bank had notice of circumstances sufficient to put it on inquiry whether the pasture rent might be a lienable claim on the tenant’s wheat. (Maelzer v. Swan, supra; Shell v. Guthrie, supra; Hayhurst v. Saile, 130 Kan. 844, 288 Pac. 539.)
It must be held that the compromise agreement should be construed in the light of the statute, and that it was only the net proceeds of Hipes’ share of the wheat which the bank was to get. The parties estimated that there was fifty acres of wheat. In fact there was about seventy acres of it, and if the crop had been bountiful and
The judgment is affirmed.