3 Pa. Super. 516 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1897
Opinion by
A lease for years is a chattel real. A building erected on a chattel is itself a chattel: Gaule v. Bilyeau, 25 Pa. 521. If this were not so as a matter of law, the lease of the 11th of December, 1888, between James B. Stark et al. and Benjamin R. Bedford, extended by an' agreement of Pierre Aslield, the assignee of Bedford, for five years from the 11th of December, 1893, to the 11th of December, 1898, made the building which was to be erected upon the leased premises personal property. The act of June 16, 1836 P. L. 755, provides that the amount of rent for which the goods and chattels taken by virtue of an execution and liable to the distress of the landlord shall be preferred shall be limited to the amount due for one year. It was held in Pattison v. McGregor, 9 W. & S. 180, that this act did not apply to the ground rent landlord and for a very obvious reason, for, if the owner of the fee and the owner of the ground rent were both entitled to have a year’s rent reserved as a preference, the very object of the limitation in the act of 1836 above referred to would be defeated. But there is, therefore, no analogy between a ground rent reserved and the present case. It iclaimed by the appellant in tins case that he was entitled to be first paid out of the proceeds of the sheriff’s sale the sum of $120, being the amount of two j'-ears’ rent, and this claim is based upon two considerations: First, because the sheriff returns that he sold the leasehold interest of land with a building thereon for $430. That “ there was no severance of the building from the leasehold. They were essentially one and were sold as one.” And, second, that the clause in the lease under which the lessee, who was the defendant in the execution agreed “ on breach of any condition to quit and give up peaceable possession of the premises to the appellants on ten days’ notice in writing ” was equivalent to the right of the lessor to re-enter and take possession of the premises. Neither of these positions is in our opinion sound. The leasehold interest is the estate which was conveyed by the lessor to the lessee. It does not embrace the house which was erected by the lessee and which, under the lease, he has the right to remove, unless the lessor should at the expiration of the lease exercise the option therein