12 N.C. App. 636 - Price v. Conley’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““A provision in a lease for termination at the option of the lessor upon breach of the lessee’s obligation to pay rental is not self-executing. Such a provision may be waived by the landlord, for whose benefit it was inserted, and he may elect to treat the lease as continuing in effect. Moreover, the purpose of such a provision is not to provide a forfeiture with which to surprise an unwary tenant, but to secure the landlord in his right to receive the rental called for in the lease. ‘Provisions for the forfeiture of a lease for nonpayment of rent, whether contractual or statutory, are considered in equity as securing the rent, and not as providing for the forfeiture of the lease where the tenant acts in good faith and pays promptly on demand.’ 49 Am. Jur. 2d, Landlord and Tenant, § 1034, p. 1002. “In the present case the plaintiff landlord, by quietly accepting monthly payments of rental in the amount of $35.00 for many months after August 1969, recognized the lease as continuing in effect and waived, not his right to collect monthly rental in the increased amount of $40.00 as called for in the lease, but his right to terminate the lease by reason of his lessee’s past defaults. This waiver continued until the lessor made demand upon the lessee to pay the amount by which he was in arrears and until the lessee, after being given a reasonable opportunity to do so, should fail to make such payment.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 21 N.C. App. 326 - Price v. Conley