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121 Mass. 328

Rich v. Smith

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided November 20, 1876

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1876-11-20

Contract to recover back rent paid in advance for a room, called Webster Hall, in a building in Hyde Park, under a lease from the defendant to the plaintiff, dated November 1, 1873, the material parts of which were as follows: “ This lease is given in consideration of an agreement, by the terms of which said Smith is to receive full benefit; so that the rent of said Webster Hall has been paid in advance for the term of three years from the first day of January next,'A. D.…

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1876-11-20

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently October 1940

7 state decisions

4018761880189019001910192019301940decided

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.

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Gray, C. J.

¶1The whole tenor of the lease clearly manifests the intention of the parties that a loss by fire should not fall upon the lessee. It inserts the usual exception in the covenant to deliver up the premises in good order at the end of the term; and contains the usual proviso that, in case the premises shall, during the term, be destroyed by fire, “ the rent hereinbefore reserved ” “ shall be suspended or abated ” until the premises shall have been put by the lessor in proper condition for use and habitation, or, at his election, the lease shall be determined. This proviso for an abatement of rent extends as well to the case of the lessor’s electing to determine the lease, as to the case of his rebuilding. “ The rent hereinbefore reserved ” can apply to nothing but the rent previously mentioned as having been paid in advance; and the only way of abating such rent is by the lessee’s recovering back a proportionate part thereof. The amount to be so recovered having been assessed upon evidence, and in a manner to which no objection is made, the

¶2Exceptions must be overruled.

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