Weichers v. Dehail
Weichers v. Dehail
Opinion of the Court
The plaintiff appeals from a judgment in his favor for damages in the sum of one dollar in a suit in which trial by jury was waived, upon a cause of action of the lessee of a portion of a building in San Francisco, for hotel purposes, for breach of an express covenant of the lease and of claimed implied covenants. The record is voluminous, and since the judgment must be sustained, no purpose will be served by an extended recital of facts. It is enough to say that since the lease was for hotel purposes, the appellant claims there was an implied covenant *548 that the heating and hot-water plants should be adequate for the use to which the building was to be devoted. It is claimed the evidence shows that neither the heating nor hot-water plant was adequate, and because there was no direct and express finding upon the issue of adequacy that the judgment must be reversed.
On behalf of the respondent it is contended the rule of implied covenants does not go to the extent claimed ¡ by the appellant, and that the evidence upon the question qf adequacy was conflicting; further, that a finding to the effect that the heating plant was installed and ready for use when the lessee entered into possession sufficiently met the issue of adequacy.
After the lease was executed, the landlord leased a portion of the ground floor of the building to other tenants who installed an auto truck repair-shop. There was evidence to the effect that the operation of the repair-shop, by reason of vibration and noise as well as by the filtration of smoke and noisome gases into the hotel, constituted such an injury to the leasehold as to amount to a constructive eviction under the implied covenant for quiet possession. The finding of the court and the conclusions of law support the position of the appellant in regard to this matter.
There was an express covenant in the lease, the substance of which was that if the hot-water tank of the buildT ing should be found to be inadequate, the landlord would install a second hot-water tank. Plaintiff demanded the installation of such a tank. At the time of trial it had not been installed. The court found that the* defendant had offered to install the tank and that his offer had not béen accepted. On behalf of the appellant it is argued that under the covenant when demand was made for the installation of the tank, the duty of the landlord to make the installation was fixed and that he should be held liable for damages by reason of his failure.
The questions of law and fact presented upon the matters involved in the foregoing statement are argued at length in the briefs. On behalf of the appellant it is most strongly urged that upon his proof of injury he was entitled to substantial damages and that the one dollar awarded him was wholly inadequate. There was evidence that some roomers left the hotel, that others insisted on
*549
having their rooms changed from a point over the auto truck shop to other parts of the hotel, and that one possible patron of the hotel refused to take a room there because of the conditions of which complaint was made. There was also evidence that by reason of those conditions, the plaintiff had been compelled to reduce the price charged for certain of the rooms in the hotel. There is no evidence concerning the price placed upon any rooms by the lessee, nor the reduced price, nor the number of rooms involved in the reduction of the price.
The rule announced in Parke v. Frank has never been questioned in this state, nor, so far as the court is advised, in any other state. (13 Cyc. 214, “Damages,” and cases cited in the note.) In the appellant’s brief the only evidence called to the attention of the court on this subject is contained in a letter addressed to the landlord by the attorney for the tenant, in which upon the basis of the number of rooms in the hotel at fixed prices per room less an arbitrary *550 deduction of ten per cent for vacancies, it was computed the net income of the hotel should have been $2,196 per month. Following this computation is the statement: “This is what Mr. Weichers should take in from this hotel if ¡ it were in proper condition, located as it is on the main artery of the city. As you know, his income has ranged from one thousand dollars to one thousand two hundred dollars a month. The largest month he ever had was one thousand six hundred dollars. In other words, he has been running behind from nine hundred to a thousand dollars a month. Somewhere in these figures a basis of adjustment must be reached.” In the absence of any evidence upon the subject, it cannot be assumed that but for the conditions of which the appellant complains there would have been no vacancies other than the arbitrarily fixed ten per cent. There is some evidence which would indicate that a portion of the failure of the lessee to receive what he - ought to have received from the building was due to other causes than any default upon the part of the landlord. The trier of the facts would not have been justified in guessing what portion of the nine hundred to one thousand dollars a month the hotel proprietor was losing was due to causes of which he complained, nor without any basis of measure to render a judgment for unproved and speculative profits.
In this case, if the court should adopt the theory of the appellant that there was an implied covenant that the heating plant should be adequate, and the facts warranted a finding that the heating plant was entirely inadequate and the lessee had sustained injury thereby, in the absence of evidence from which the measure of damage for that injury could be ascertained, he would be entitled only to a judgment for nominal damages under the rule announced in Parke v. Frank, supra.
Criticism is directed in appellant’s brief to certain other findings, but they fall within the same rule as that applied to the absence of the finding on inadequacy of the heating plant. If they were in any degree defective and appellant’s contentions in regard to them could be sustained, still there was no evidence to warrant a judgment for more than nominal damages.
The judgment is affirmed.
Langdon, P. J., and Haven, J., concurred.
A petition to have the cause heard in the supreme court, after judgment in the district court of appeal, was denied by the .supreme court on August 11, 1919.
All the Justices concurred, except Wilbur, J., who was absent.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- A. J. WEICHERS, Appellant, v. ELMO DEHAIL, Administrator, Etc., Respondent
- Cited By
- 4 cases
- Status
- Published