Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

117 Mass. 265

Paul v. Chickering

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1875-03-01

Contract on a covenant in a lease to pay taxes. The case came before this court on an appeal by the plaintiff from a judgment of the Superior Court for the defendants, upon an agreed statement of facts in substance as follows : By an indenture made between the plaintiff, of the first part, and the defendants and Thomas E. Chickering, since deceased, of the second part, the plaintiff leased to the defendants and the said deceased a certain building at the corner' of…

Relies on Walker v. Whittemore

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1875-03-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently February 1978

5 state decisions

2018751880189019001910192019301940195019601970decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Ames, J.

¶1There can be no doubt that the covenant of the lessees bound them to the payment of the tax, unless the circumstances of the sale of the demised premises by the plaintiff, after the term had been brought to a close by the fire, furnish some ground for relieving them from that obligation. Wilkinson v. Libbey, 1 Allen, 375. Walker v. Whittemore, 112 Mass. 187. Amory v. Melvin, Ib. 83. It appears to us to be impossible that that transaction should have that effect. The promise of Scott, the purchaser, to pay one half of the tax in question was only a part of the consideration which he gave for the land. The payment of half of the amount of the tax, which otherwise the vendor must have paid, was merely a part of the price of the estate. The price was the whole amount agreed to be paid, and it is immaterial whether it were expressed in one gross sum, or divided into separate items. Whatever price the plaintiff obtained for the estate, and in whatever mode it was computed, it could have no effect upon the covenant of the lessees to pay the amount of the tax to him.

¶2Judgment for the plaintiff for the whole tax with interest from the date of the writ.

/117/mass/265 · .json · Public domain