Board of Education v. Grant

THE COURT. This is an agreed case submitted to the superior court of the city and county of San Francisco, under sections 1138, et seq., of the Code of Civil Procedure. The contest is between the board of education of said city and county, who is appellant here, and John Grant and a number of other persons who are here respondents. Judgment was rendered in the court below for the respondents, and the board of education [41]appeals. Tbe controversy is as to tbe ownership of certain permanent buildings erected by tbe respondents upon certain school lots owned by tbe appellant.

Tbe legislature, by an act approved March 30, 1874, authorized tbe board of supervisors of said city and county to lease for a term of twenty years certain parts of a one hundred vara school lot (No. 128), on the southwest comer of Market and Fifth streets, in said city and county. Tn pursuance of the authority granted by said act the board caused the land authorized to be leased to be surveyed and divided into eleven lots,i each being twenty-five feet front, and executed leases to the respondents or their predecessors in interest—all the leases being substantially similar, and each being of one or more of the subdivisions of said land. The leases were for twenty years, and were executed by the board through the mayor, he having been authorized by the board to execute the leases. During the term of the leases the respective lessees excavated the soil of the lots “to an average depth of nine feet, and upon and in said soil so excavated built and laid brick foundation walls imbedded in the soil, and upon said foundation walls erected buildings, all of said buildings except the building erected on said lot No. 3 being frame, wooden buildings, four stories in height above the basement, and the building so erected upon said lot No. 3 being a brick building, three stories in height above the basement.” All of the buildings remained on the land until after the expiration of the leases, and axe still on said land. These buildings are, therefore, under both common and statutory law, part of the realty, and belong to the owner of the land in the absence of any covenant in the leases providing otherwise. And in neither of the leases involved here is there any covenant or provision that the tenants might remove the buildings. It is clear, therefore, that under the leases in question the buildings in controversy belonged at the expiration of the terms of said leases to the appellant, the board of education.

The respondents endeavor to avoid this apparently inevitable conclusion by contending that the leases are to be considered as changed or modified by a certain advertisement made by the board of supervisors for proposals to lease said lots, which contained the following: “All improvements on said lots, unless