Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

50 Cal. 3

Skaggs v. Emerson

California Supreme Court

Decided July 1, 1875

California Supreme Court · decided 1875-07-01

The plaintiff, on the 15th clay of April, 1872, by lease in writing, demised to the defendant for the term of one year from the 1st day of May, 1872, with the privilege of two years, the premises known as the “Skaggs Springs,” northwest of Healdsburg, in Sonoma County, State of California, to include the hotel building, cottages, corrals, and half the bam; also, the small fenced field (about ten acres), southwest t)f the hotel, and the garden and orchard at the hotel; the…

Relies on Camarillo v. Fenlon

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1875-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 19 later decisions — most recently August 1979

2 district · 16 state decisions

4018751880189019001910192019301940195019601970decided

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 →

By the Court, McKinstry, J.:

¶1We shall assume that the demand on notice of the 18th of September, 1873, was in proper time.

¶2*6It is not necessary to inquire whether the plaintiff would be entitled, in any form of action, to recover the possession of the portion of the premises admitted to have been retained by defendant; for it is clear that he should not have judgment in this action unless the lease was forfeited by defendant’s failure to pay rent, the notice and demand. Upon the forfeiture the plaintiff must rest as his ground for any judgment, and he claims that the forfeiture arose from non-payment. But if the averments of the answer, which were stricken out by the court below, are true, no recovery could be had upon the covenant to pay rent since defendant had been evicted by plaintiff from a substantial part of the demised premises. The covenant to pay rent is entire, and cannot be severed or apportioned. (Camarillo v. Fenlon, 49 Cal. 202; Taylor’s Landlord and Tenant, Secs. 315, 378, and cases there cited.) There can be no apportionment, because the partial eviction is the wrongful act of the landlord himself, and no man should be encouraged to disturb a tenant in the possession of that which, by the policy of the feudal law, he ought to protect and defend.

¶3If a landlord is unable to give possession of all the lands described in the lease, and the tenant chooses to accept part, he may be compelled to pay the reasonable value of the use and occupation of that part. In such case the lease may be regarded as abandoned by both parties. (Camarillo v. Fenlon, supra.)But the position of the present defendant is different. The lease was not terminated by the wrongful eviction by the landlord of the lessee; he still continued to occupy the part from which he had not been evicted, under and by virtue of the written lease. (Leishman v. White, 1 Allen, 489.) He retained the right to occupy until the expiration of the term, paying no rent while the partial eviction continued. As he was not liable to pay rent if the averments of the answer were true, the lease was not forfeited by reason of the non-payment, whatever notice or demand was given or made.

¶4Order overruling defendant’s demurrer to plaintiff’s amended complaint; order sustaining plaintiff’s demurrer to defendant’s answer, and order overruling defendant’s objec*7tion to jury trial, affirmed. Judgment and order allowing plaintiff’s motion to strike out portions of defendant’s amended answer, reversed, and cause remanded with direction to County Court to deny the plaintiff’s motion to strike out portions of the amended answer.

¶5Mr. Chief Justice Wallace did not express an opinion.

/50/cal/3 · .json · Public domain