County of Yuba v. Mattoon

PEEK, J.

Defendants appeal from a judgment in favor of plaintiff in the sum of $1,400 for rent and $150 for damages.

It appears that plaintiff leased approximately 300 acres of land to defendants for the purpose of growing rice thereon during the season of 1955. The lease provided for a rental of 20 per cent of the gross crop proceeds, or in any event a minimum of $2,500. No rice was planted and plaintiff elected to sue for the minimum rent only. Plaintiff also sought damages in the sum of $150 for the alleged failure of defendants to conduct necessary rodent and pest control.

Defendants pleaded impossibility of performance by reason

[458]

of a government order limiting the amount of rice which they would be permitted to grow in that year. Prior to said order defendants had also obligated themselves to plant rice on land leased from others, or a total of approximately 500 acres. Defendants’ allotment permitted them to farm 287 acres of the total acreage under lease. They elected to allow plaintiff’s land to remain idle and to devote their entire allotment to the land leased from others.

Defendants’ attempt to show complete impossibility of performance went no further than to establish partial impossibility ; that is, the evidence disclosed that the acreage they were permitted to plant to rice amounted to about 58 per cent of the total acreage under lease. Under such circumstances defendants became obligated to prorate their allotment among their various lessors.

(Akins

v.

Riverbank Canning Co.,

80 Cal.App.2d 868, 872-873 [183 P.2d 86].)

The applicable rule is set forth in Restatement of the Law of Contracts, section 464, subsection 1, as follows: “Where a promisor makes two or more bargains and facts then exist or subsequently occur that on grounds of impossibility prevent the imposition of a duty to perform all the promises in their entirety, or that discharge a duty to do so that has arisen, but partial performance capable of ratable apportionment to the several bargains is possible, the promisor is under a duty to make such apportionment and is otherwise discharged. ...” (See also Williston on Contracts, rev. ed., vol. 6, p. 1962.)