Graniteville Mfg. Co. v. Renew

• Decision Date: 26 January 1920
• Docket Number: 10322.
• Parties: GRANITEVILLE MFG. CO. v. RENEW.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

102 S.E. 18

113 S.C. 171

GRANITEVILLE MFG. CO. v. RENEW.

No. 10322.

Supreme Court of South Carolina

January 26, 1920

Appeal from Common Pleas Circuit Court of Aiken County; Edward McIver, Judge.

Proceeding to eject from a dwelling house by the Graniteville Manufacturing Company against Harvey Renew. From judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals. Affirmed.

John F Williams, of Aiken, for appellant.

Hendersons of Aiken, for respondent.

GAGE J.

Proceeding before a magistrate and jury under section 3509 of the Code of Laws to eject a person from a dwelling house. The jury found that the plaintiff was entitled to have the defendant ejected from the house and premises in dispute; the circuit court concluded that a warrant of ejectment ought to issue the defendant has appealed from that judgment.

The controversy arises out of these circumstances: Renew was a worker in the cotton mills at Graniteville. These workers, according to the custom common in the mills of this state, occupy, while they work in the mill, houses supplied to them by the mill company, and they generally pay therefor a stated rent. The defendant was discharged from the service of the mill, and was paid his wages, less the rent due. The mill company notified him to quit the house he occupied within three days, and he declined to do so.

The appellant has argued three questions: (1) That all the testimony shows that Renew was in, not as tenant, but as a servant; that his occupancy of the house and lot was but incidental to that service, and that therefore his right rests under section 3508 of the Code of Laws, which allows him 10 days' notice, which he had not, in the place of 3 days' notice, which he had; (2) that the jury box was not rightly prepared; (3) that the magistrate did not declare the law to the jury.

A practical difference betwixt the plaintiff's contention that Renew was a tenant holding over (section 3509) and Renew's contention that he was a servant occupying (section 3508) lies in the matter of 3 or 10 days' notice to quit. For no matter in what capacity Renew occupied the premises, they are not his, and he is bound to give them up, sooner or later, on demand of the owner. So at last the question is one of procedure, not so much what one's right is as how one shall procure his right.

We are of the opinion that the proceeding was properly brought under section 3509. It is manifest from the history of the times and the words of the statute that section 3508, first enacted in 1866, was made to govern the ejectment of tenants at will domestic servants, and common laborers of the class then occupying those relationships. The instant is not such a case. Renew was not (1) a tenant at will of the mill company; he was under contract to occupy the house so long as he labored in the mill; nor (2) was he under contract with the mill company as a domestic servant or common laborer. Section 3509, first enacted in 1878, is of wider application than the act of 1866. It expressly includes in its terms "all cases": (1) Where tenants hold over after the expiration of the contract for rent; and (2) all cases where the tenant (before expiration of the contract) shall be in arrears of rent. In the instant case Renew was manifestly a tenant. The return to the notice so recites in totidem verbis. He occupied a house and lot of the mill company under a contract, and the contract was that he would pay 70 cents per week rent, and that he would surrender possession, not in one week or four, but on the day when he ceased to...