7 Ga. App. 142 | Ga. Ct. App. | 1909
(After stating the case.) We think the contract set out in the petition, as interpreted by the allegations thereof, should be treated as an entire contract. The plaintiffs could not carry out their part of the contract and cultivate the land, without having a pasture in which to keep their stock. This pasture was rented to them by the defendant and they went into possession of it. The defendant’s subsequent .conduct in depriving them of the use of the pasture constituted a breach of his contract and amounted to an eviction of the plaintiffs. They were thereupon entitled to recover from him such proximate damages as were caused by his breach of the contract. Plaintiffs had their election, and could have sued for the value of their lease, as the measure of tlieir damages, or they could treat the breach on the part of the defendant as a discharge from airy further performance of the terms of the contract on their part, and sue for the value of any work or services performed by them in part execution of the contract. Hardin v. Lang, 110 Ga. 392 (36 S. E. 100). If the plaintiffs, in good faith and relying on the contract, had made preparations to cultivate the land and make the crop, and had expended labor in improving the property of the defendant, in erecting fences thereon and repairing the house and-barn, and had plowed the land, rendering it suitable for cultivation, and this work and these services had been rendered useless to them by the unwarranted conduct of the defendant in breaking his contract and in evicting them from the premises, they would have the right to recover the worth of the labor they had bestowed upon the premises in preparing to carry out their agreement under the rental contract. These would be special damages flowing directly from the breach of the contract by the defendant. 3 Sutherland on Damages, §865. In the case of Cilly v. Hawkins, 48 Ill. 311,