Carmine v. Bowen
| Decision Date | 01 November 1906 |
| Parties | CARMINE v. BOWEN. |
| Court | Maryland Court of Appeals |
Appeal from Circuit Court, Baltimore County, in Equity; N. Charles Burke, Judge.
Suit by John W. Bowen against Charles G. Carmine. From an order granting an injunction prohibiting defendant from interfering with plaintiff's rights, defendant appeals. Affirmed.
Argued before McSHERRY, C.J., and BRISCOE, BOYD, SCHMUCKER, and JONES, JJ.
Jacob J. H. Mitnick and John I. Yellot, for appellant.
Ernest C. Hatch and Z. Howard Isaac, for appellee.
This record has been brought up from the circuit court for Baltimore county sitting as a court of equity. By an order of that court an injunction which prohibited the appellant, the landlord, from interfering with the appellee, the tenant, in the harvesting and removal of a wheat and rye crop was made perpetual, and from that order this appeal was taken. The facts which need be stated are briefly these: In the month of December, 1900, the appellant rented to the appellee a farm situated in Baltimore county, and containing about 270 acres for a term of three years, to begin on the 1st day of March in the following year, at and for a money rent of $700 annually. By the terms of the written agreement the appellant stipulated to furnish $300 worth of bone fertilizer each year, and the appellee bound himself "to farm the fields in rotation in a proper manner." When the appellee took possession of the premises in the spring of 1901, there was no wheat or rye crop growing on the farm; the former tenant having failed to sow either the one or the other. In August 1903, the appellant gave to the appellee a notice in writing to remove from and quit the farm on the 1st day of the ensuing March; that being the day upon which the term was to end. A few days after that notice had been given, the appellant wrote a letter to the appellee, in which he stated In the latter part of May, 1904, the appellant sent another letter, warning the appellee not to undertake to cut or take away any of the crops then on the farm, "or which shall hereafter mature thereon." Prior to the date of this last letter the term of the appellee as tenant had expired, and he had, in obedience to the notice given him and pursuant to the stipulations of the lease, vacated the farm on March the 1st. The appellee sowed in the fall of 1903--that is, in the fall preceding the expiration of his tenancy on March 1, 1904--about 50 acres of wheat and 20 acres of rye, which matured and ripened after the end of his term. It further appears from the bill, the answer, and the testimony, and it is therefore undisputed, that after about 6 acres of wheat had been sowed in the fall of 1903, the appellant went to the field and inspected the work, and inquired how much timothy was being sowed, and when told by the appellee that the quantity was a strong peck to the acre expressed himself as satisfied. At the same time the appellee said to the appellant. "I don't anticipate any trouble in the cutting of my crop," to which the appellee made no reply. The crop thus alluded to was the one now in controversy. There seems to have been some jar or friction about the sowing of grass seed and about the quality of the fertilizer furnished, and the unwillingness, or supposed unwillingness, of the tenant to sow the grass seed doubtless induced the landlord to claim the away-going crop. Indeed, this is practically admitted by the appellant, for he was asked, "When did you make up your mind that Bowen should not come back and harvest that crop?" and he answered, "The very hour he told me he would not sow grass seed." It is reasonably clear, then, that the intention of the landlord to claim the crops was the direct result of the tenant's intimated purpose not to sow grass seed, and, while the landlord did not admit the right of the tenant to return after the expiration of his lease and secure the away-going crops, he strongly implied in the letter of August, before the crops were sown, that a failure to sow grass seed would defeat the tenant's right to remove the crops after the term had ended. But the tenant did sow the grass seed, and at the very time he was putting it in the ground, in accordance with the insistence of the landlord, he remarked to the latter that he (the tenant) anticipated no trouble in cutting the crop he was then sowing, to which remark the landlord made no reply. When the appellant refused to allow the appellee to enter upon the premises and to harvest the crop in the summer of 1904, though every dollar of the money rent had been paid by the tenant before the expiration of the term, the appellee filed a bill in the circuit court for Baltimore county, in which he prayed for relief by way of injunction to restrain the appellant from interfering with his entering upon the premises and his harvesting and removal of the crops. The tenant bases his claim to the crops upon the terms of the lease and upon the custom of the country under which an away-going tenant is allowed, it is asserted, when the lease is for a definite period, to return and secure the crops sowed by him during the last year of his tenancy, though they mature after the term has expired. There is another ground for relief which was not relied on in the bill nor pressed at the argument, but to which we will allude later on. The appellant, the landlord, denies that the tenant is entitled to the crops in question under any term or provision of the lease. He asserts that there is no such custom of the country as is set up by the tenant, and he, in addition, expressly challenges the jurisdiction of a court of equity to decree relief in this proceeding.
The general doctrine of the common law is well settled that where the renting is for a time certain, the tenant is not entitled to the outgoing crops which mature after the termination of his lease, unless by the custom of the country or by express agreement with his landlord. Taylor's Land. & Ten. §§ 534, 536; Dircks v. Brant, 56 Md. 502. The reason for the rule as given by Lord Mansfield in Wigglesworth v. Dallison, 1 Doug. 201, is because it was the tenant's own folly to sow when at the time of sowing he knew that his term would expire, and he would be out of possession before he could reap. But the reason of the rule, and hence the rule itself, ceases when a general custom to the contrary prevails, or when an express agreement secures to the tenant the right to enter and cut the crops after the expiration of the term; because when such a custom prevails it is read into the contract of leasing, and the latter must be interpreted in the light of that custom; and where there is an express contract reserving to the tenant the right to remove the away-going crops, the rule of law is by the agreement of the parties waived and dispensed with. Inasmuch as it is the folly of the tenant to sow when he knows he cannot reap, since he has no interest in the land nor in anything which savors of the realty after the expiration of his term of tenancy, he has no right to enter and remove the crops which mature after his...
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