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99 Mass. 457

Bainway v. Cobb

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided September 15, 1868

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1868-09-15

Tort for the conversion of a stone sink. At the trial in the superior court there was evidence of the following facts : The sink, which weighed about two hundred or two hundred and fifty pounds, was put by Hiram Cobb, twenty-five or thirty years ago, in the corner of a room, over a cistern, in the house owned and occupied by him in West Stockbridge; rested upon a wooden frame next the sides of the room, without being nailed or fastened to the house, except that a lead pipe…

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1868-09-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently April 1944

4 state decisions

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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, J.

¶1Upon the facts stated in the bill of exceptions, we are unanimously of opinion that the stone sink was annexed to and became part of the freehold of Hiram Cobb. This is shown by the purpose and the mode of placing it on the premises. In Park v. Baker, 7 Allen, 78, which is relied on to support the ruling of the court below, the ice chest held to be a chattel was not an article which necessarily or usually forms part of the fitting up of the house itself, and was expressly agreed to have never been in any way connected with or affixed to the building. But the sink in this case, if not absolutely necessary to the completeness of the dwelling-house, was not only by its construction and position obviously adapted and intended to be, as it after-wards was in fact, used daily for the ordinary domestic work; but it was fitted in a frame, and set closely in the corner and against the sides of the room, over a cistern of water; was so heavy as to require no other fastening to keep it in place ; and was originally connected by a pump with the cistern under it, and by a pipe, passing through the side of the house, with a stone drain to carry off the waste water. The removal of the pump and the pipe, without otherwise changing the position or the use of the sink, did not sever it from the freehold or make it personal property again.

¶2If it had been annexed by a tenant for years, he might have disannexed and removed it during his term, and not afterwards but, subject to that right of removal, it would have been rea *459estate; and the law is more favorable to the heir as against the executor, both claiming under the same absolute owner of the estate, than to the landlord as against his tenant, who has paid for the occupation of the premises and himself put in the fixtures in question. Grymes v. Boweren, 6 Bing. 437, and 4 Moore & Payne, 143. Wall v. Hinds, 4 Gray, 256. Bliss v. Whitney, 9 Allen, 114. Kutter v. Smith, 2 Wallace, 491. Blethen v. Towle, 40 Maine, 310. Hays v. Doane, 3 Stockt. 84. This sink, having been annexed to the freehold by the owner of the fee, and not severed before his death, descended to his heirs as real estate, and did not devolve upon his administrator and next of kin as personal property. It was not therefore included in the household furniture given up by the other children to the daughter under whom the plaintiff claims, but continued to be real estate, to which she as one tenant in common could not make a good title as against the others, and which passed to the defendant by the deed from his coheirs. Exceptions sustained.

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