Edwards v. Columbia Amusement Co.

• Decision Date: 24 May 1913
• Citation: 215 Mass. 125,102 N.E. 268
• Parties: EDWARDS et al. v. COLUMBIA AMUSEMENT CO.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

215 Mass. 125

102 N.E. 268

EDWARDS et al. v. COLUMBIA AMUSEMENT CO.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

May 24, 1913

COUNSEL

H E. Warner, of Boston, for appellant.

Frank T. Benner and Laurence A. Brown, both of Boston, for appellees.

OPINION

SHELDON J.

The fundamental question is whether the judgment rendered in the municipal court of the city of Boston in favor of the present defendant against these plaintiffs for possession of the premises described in the bill is a bar to the maintenance of the present suit.

Since the filing of the amendment or supplemental bill in October 1911, and of the amendment allowed on January 23, 1912 the plaintiffs have asked only that their lease, as to the premises described in the bill, be declared valid, and that the defendant be ordered to surrender to the plaintiffs possession of said premises.

The judgment in the municipal court was rendered after the filing of the original bill in this case but before the filing of the supplemental bill. It was rendered upon an action brought by the present defendant under R. L. c. 181 against these plaintiffs, to recover possession of the premises. Due service of process was had, the parties appeared, and the case was tried in the municipal court. At that trial evidence was put in as to whether or not the several incumbrancers on the Grace property and the defendant had notice of these plaintiffs' lease, and that issue was raised. The present plaintiffs did not appeal from that judgment, but surrendered possession. They now seek to be restored to that possession.

The validity against the defendant of the plaintiffs' lease depended on the question whether the defendant or its predecessors in title had notice of that lease. It ran for more than seven years, and was not recorded until after the title under which the defendant claimed had accrued. R. L. c 127, § 4. That issue was raised at the time in the municipal court, and the judgment in favor of this defendant could not have been given unless that issue had been found in its favor. It could not otherwise have been found, under R. L. c. 181, § 3, that the defendant was entitled to possession. Moreover, as the plaintiffs had been in quiet possession for more than three years before the commencement of that action, the judgment could not have been entered unless it had been found that their estate had been ended (R. L. c. 181, § 10); but no claim was made that it had been ended, except upon the ground that it had not been seasonably recorded, and that neither the defendant nor its predecessors in title had had any notice thereof.

Indeed there is nothing to indicate that any other issue was raised at the trial. The finding accordingly must have been made that there had been no such notice. That finding became res judicata between these parties. Black River Savings Bank v. Edwards, 10 Gray, 387; Jennison v. West Springfield, 13 Gray, 544, 545; Burlen v Shannon, 99 Mass. 200, 203, 96 Am. Dec. 733; Jamaica Pond Aqueduct Corp. v. Chandler, 121 Mass. 1, 2; Berman v. Henry N. Clark Co., 194 Mass. 248, 80 N.E. 480. Neither party can raise the question again in other...