Brevoort Hotel v. Rose

DRAPEAU, J. Lori, Ltd., a corporation, and Zelletta M. Rose own the Brevoort Hotel in North Hollywood. They leased the property to E. E. Wolfe and his wife. The lease did not contain a clause forbidding assignment without consent of the lessors. The lease was prepared in the office of A. Brigham Rose, Esq., husband of Zelletta M. Rose, and a member of the State Bar of California.

Mr. Rose said that the lease had been typewritten by an employee in his office; that he had told her to type such a clause into the lease; that he always supposed she had done so; and that it came as a great shock to him when he found that the clause had been omitted from the document subscribed to by the parties.

The Wolfes advised Mr. Rose that they were going to assign the lease to Ben Hecht and J. G. Salomon. Mr. Rose, thinking the omitted clause was in the lease, told them that they couldn’t do that. They told Mr. Rose that the lease would be assigned, whether he liked it or not. And so it was assigned, first to Hecht and Salomon, and, later on, by them to Brevoort Hotel, a corporation. Hecht and Salomon caused this corporation to be organized, owned all of its stock, and managed and controlled it.

Litigation and bad feeling among all the parties have been manifest ever since. (See Rose v. Hecht, 94 Cal.App.2d 662 [211 P.2d 347]; Lori, Ltd,, Inc. v. Wolfe, 85 Cal.App.2d 54 [192 P.2d 112]; Lori, Ltd., Inc. v. Wolfe, 80 Cal.App.2d 557 [180 P.2d 21].)

In Lori, Ltd., Inc. v. Wolfe, supra, 85 Cal.App.2d 54, the Roses sought to reform the lease. That action was decided against them in the superior court, and the judgment was affirmed by the District Court of Appeal.

The facts in the instant case may be briefly stated: In an action in the superior court (No. 532896), the Roses sued Brevoort Hotel, a corporation, together with other named defendants. In that action they secured an attachment on bank acceounts' of the Brevoort corporation, and put a keeper in the hotel. At that time the Brevoort corporation owned by assignment the leasehold interest in the property.

[3]The case went off by way of nonsuit and judgment against the plaintiffs as to the hotel corporation.

Brevoort corporation then brought this action for damages for wrongful attachment. The case was tried for several days in the superior court. Findings were against the Roses and their sureties on attachment bonds, and for Brevoort corporation, with damages fixed at $4,500.