Kimball v. Masters, Wardens And Members of Grand Lodge of Masons In Massachusetts

• Decision Date: 05 April 1881
• Citation: 131 Mass. 59
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court
• Parties: James M. Kimball & others v. The Masters, Wardens and Members of the Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts

131 Mass. 59

James M. Kimball & others v. The Masters, Wardens and Members of the Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts

Supreme Court of Massachusetts

April 5, 1881

[Syllabus Material]

Suffolk. Contract for breach of the covenant for quiet enjoyment, in a lease of certain rooms in the Masonic Temple in Boston executed by the defendant corporation to the plaintiff on April 10, 1869. Trial in the Superior Court before Aldrich J., who reported the case for the determination of this court, in substance as follows:

In one of the rooms demised were two cases of drawers with shelving cupboards and mirrors, constructed and fastened to the room as follows: The cases were constructed at a carpenter's shop for and at the expense of Copeland and Tarbell, then lessees of the room in which the cases were placed, and were brought to the room in sections, in a finished state, except that they were not painted. The base, to the height of about three feet, was occupied with drawers, and on these stood cases with shelves, with doors in front, some seven or seven and one half feet high, with a cornice at the top and a moulding at the bottom, resting on the floor of the room when the cases were in place. In one of the cases there were two recesses in the shelves, extending to the top and nearly to the back; and in each of these recesses was a mirror, three or four feet wide and seven feet high, with a heavy moulding at the top. In the other case there was one recess, occupied by a mirror of the same dimensions as the first two named. The mirrors formed a component part of the cases, and had no other connection with the premises leased, except as they were connected with the cases. One of the cases was thirty-nine feet long, the other thirty, and each ten feet high. Before these cases were put into the room, the floor of the room, consisting of marble tiles, had been laid, and the room had been plastered, but was not painted or frescoed. The cases, when placed in the room, occupied spaces for which they had been made, and rested on the marble tile floor, and were fastened and held in position by nails two or three inches long, driven through the wooden backs of the cases into the plastering behind them, and some into the woodwork of the room around and behind the cases. The base-board around the room did not extend behind the cases, but came up to the moulding around the base of the cases.

After the cases were in place, the ceiling of the room, and the walls down to the top of the cases, were frescoed, and the woodwork of the room and the cases was painted. The color of the cases corresponded with that of the doors and windows. When the cases were subsequently removed, as hereinafter stated, that portion of the walls which had been covered by them was left without paint, and the plastering and woodwork, into which the nails, as before stated, had been driven to hold the cases in place, were left somewhat broken and injured, and the plaintiffs were subjected to an expense of about $ 200 to repair and finish that part of the room, including painting and frescoing, to make it correspond with the rest of it.

At the time the demised premises were examined by the plaintiffs, prior to their lease, and when they entered and took possession under their lease, said cases were in the room, as above described. There was nothing said between the parties to the lease as to whether these cases were or were not a part of the leased premises.

The cases were procured and put into the room at their own expense by Copeland and Tarbell, former tenants of the defendant corporation, and they fitted up the room and occupied it as a confectionery shop, in connection with a restaurant, under a lease from the defendant. Copeland and Tarbell failed, and their assets were conveyed to John C. Gilbert and Israel Nash, as trustees, who sold the same by auction, including said cases, in the month of December 1868. The cases were bid off at the auction by Williams and Everett. On January 4, 1869, the board of directors of the defendant, having charge of said premises and all matters connected therewith, passed a vote that all fixtures in the rooms recently occupied by Copeland belong to the Grand Lodge, and that the president of the board of directors be directed to see that none of said fixtures be removed. And, on January 15, the same board voted that the president of the board of directors be authorized to settle with Charles Copeland and others claiming title to the fixtures in the said rooms. In accordance with this vote, the president executed an agreement with Copeland and Gilbert and Nash, by the terms of which the persons last named were to remove the cases. Copeland and Tarbell thereupon gave up, and the defendant resumed possession of, the leased premises.

The plaintiffs were not informed of the sale nor of the agreement, and were ignorant of the same until after they had executed their lease with the defendant, and had entered and taken possession of the demised premises, after which Williams and Everett demanded the cases of the plaintiffs and removed them, claiming them as purchasers at the sale by auction. The plaintiffs, who had sublet the room in which the cases were, remitted to their lessees in satisfaction of a claim for damages in consequence of...