Georgeous v. Lewis

LENNON, P. J.

In this action the plaintiff secured a judgment for damages against the defendants in the sum of two hundred and ten dollars for the alleged breach of an implied covenant of quiet possession, which it is claimed was contained in a sublease from defendants to plaintiff of a portion of certain premises occupied by the defendants in the conduct of a saloon business, under a lease from the owners of the building.

The defendants have appealed from the judgment alone, and the case comes here upon the judgment-roll and a duly authenticated transcript of the record of the proceedings and all of the evidence had upon the trial in the lower court, as provided in section 953a of the Code of Civil Procedure.

The essential facts of the case upon which the judgment is based are shown by the findings of the lower court and the record of the evidence adduced at the trial to be as follows:

The original lease of the entire premises from the owner of the building to the defendants was dated the twentieth day of July, 1909, and granted the use and occupation of the premises to the defendants “for a period of nine months from the 15th day of July, 1909, or for so much of that time as the buildings are not removed by order of any municipal authority of the city and county of San Francisco, or in compliance with the requirements of any municipal authority of the city and county of San Francisco.”

On the twentieth day of July, 1909, the date of the original lease, the defendants, by a lease expressed in writing, sublet to Michael Pappas and William Pasros for use as a bootblack stand a space five feet in width by twelve feet in depth, situate in the front of the premises, from the said “20th day of July, 1909, to the 20th day of July, 1910, at the annual rental

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of $900 payable monthly in advance in equal payments of $75.” This sublease was in the ordinary form; and in addition to the usual covenants and agreements of such instruments stipulated that it was “to hold only to the conditions of original lease.”

On February 24, 1910, the plaintiff, for a valuable consideration and with the consent of the defendants, became the assignee of the sublease, and was in the occupation of the space leased thereunder on June 20, 1910, at which time the building was torn down and both the plaintiff and defendants evicted and deprived of possession by the over-landlord.