32 Pa. Super. 348 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1907
Opinion by
The single matter assigned as error is the refusal of the court to enter judgment for the defendant non obstante veredicto.
One Thompson leased from the defendant room 545 on the fifth floor of its office building, to be used as an office for the conduct of a publishing business. The plaintiffs delivered certain articles of office furniture to Thompson, under a contract of bailment, which were placed in this room. As they were authorized to do under the terms of the bailment, as well as with the consent of Thompson, the plaintiffs through their employees subsequently removed these chattels from room 545 to the first floor of the building, and were about to take them out of the door, when they were forcibly taken from their possession by the defendant’s employees and returned to room 545, where, upon the same day or the following, they were distrained for rent due the defendant at the time of the attempted removal, and subsequently sold.
1. The evidence as to the force used was sufficient to warrant the submission of the question of conversion to the jury; it was submitted with appropriate Instructions, and their ver
2. The defendant had no right to take the goods from the plaintiffs’ possession and return them to room 545 by reason of the fact that they had been brought down the stairway. Even if we assume that the plaintiffs knew of the defendant’s rule that all furniture, bulky packages and freight must be carried on the freight elevator, and were bound by it, there was no occasion to bring it into play after the goods had been brought to the first floor; for obviously a past violation of the rule could not be pleaded in defense of a seizure of the goods which otherwise would be unwarranted.
3. When the case was here before
4. The general rule of law makes.all the goods and chattels (with many exceptions not necessary to be noticed here) found on the demised premises subject to distress for the rent thereof. At common law, if the lessor did not find sufficient distress on the demised premises, he could resort nowhere else: 3 Bl. Com. 11. This is still the rule, except as it has been changed by statute so far as to permit the landlord to follow goods of the tenant clandestinely removed; but these statutes do not apply to the goods of strangers, nor to goods in which the tenant may have had a qualified interest as bailee but which have been redelivered into the possession of the bailor before the distress. See Adams v. LaComb, 1 Dall. 440; Ball v. Penn, 10 Pa. Superior Ct. 544, and cases there cited: Sleeper v. Parrish, 7 Phila. 247. The lease from the defendant to Thompson is not printed in full in the appellant’s paper-book; therefore we cannot say distinctly what privileges or rights it gave the lessee outside of room 545. Of course we must assume he had a right of passage by the stairways, elevators and halls, but that, of itself, would not constitute them, and all of them, part and parcel of the demised premises within the meaning of the rule under consideration. See Capel v. Buszard, 6 Bing. 150; Winslow v. Henry, 5 Hill, 481; Pickering v. Breen, 22 Pa. Superior Ct. 4.
5. It is thought that the present case is different because the lease from the defendant to Thompson contained this provision : “ When rent is in arrear, lessee, or those claiming under lessee, shall not remove property from the building without the written consent of lessor. Lessee also agrees that all property on said premises and all property removed therefrom for thirty days after such removal shall be liable to distress for rent.” We fail to see any substantial ground for holding that a third party, so far as concerns his goods, is bound by an agreement, of which he has no knowledge, between the owner of an office building and a lessee of one of its offices, to the effect that no property shall be removed from the building without the writ-hen consent of the lessor, and that all property removed therefrom shall be liable to distress for rent for thirty days thereafter.
Judgment affirmed.