Miller v. Morine
| Decision Date | 05 November 1914 |
| Docket Number | 29709 |
| Citation | 149 N.W. 229,167 Iowa 287 |
| Parties | H. W. MILLER, Appellant, v. H. M. MORINE, Appellee |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
Appeal from Guthrie District Court.--HON. W. H. FAHEY, Judge.
ACTION to recover an installment of rent, under a written lease and a rent note. The defendant admitted the execution of the writing. He pleaded an affirmative defense and several counts of a counterclaim. He was successful as to one count, and the plaintiff's recovery was reduced accordingly by the verdict. From a judgment in his favor for the reduced amount the plaintiff has appealed.
Reversed and Remanded.
Milligan & Moore and Howard & Sayers, for appellant.
Weeks Vincent & Weeks, for appellee.
OPINION
The plaintiff leased to the defendant by written lease his farm of six hundred and forty acres located in Guthrie county, for a term of five years, beginning March 1, 1909, and ending March 1, 1914, for an agreed rental of $ 2,000 per year. The rent for each year was payable $ 600 on October 1st, and $ 1,400 on February 15th following. The defendant occupied the premises only to March 1, 1913; on such date he relinquished the premises for a consideration, the plaintiff having sold the farm to a purchaser. This action was brought for the last installment of the 1912 rent, which became due February 15, 1913. The defendant received from plaintiff $ 800 for the surrender of his lease. He pleaded as an affirmative defense herein that it was agreed that, in addition to such $ 800 he should receive also the $ 1,400 note, now in suit. He pleaded a counterclaim for damages in various counts, based upon various alleged breaches of contract, and totaling about $ 13,000. In one count he alleged that prior to the execution of the written lease the plaintiff orally agreed to tile drain the leased premises, and that he thereafter failed to do so to the damage of the defendant in the sum of $ 6,000. This was the only count for damages submitted to the jury. The jury rendered a verdict for the plaintiff for $ 303. It is manifest, therefore, that the jury allowed a recovery on defendant's counterclaim to the amount of about $ 1,100.
Forty-six assignments of error are presented to us.
I. The one question in the case, however, is, was it competent for the defendant to prove the alleged oral agreement or promise of the plaintiff, and thus ingraft it upon the written lease?
The defendant testified over the objections of the plaintiff as follows:
A. And I told him I could not rent a farm of that kind very well, because it was quite a proposition in the shape it was in. It was pretty near worthless. 'Well,' he says, 'I will tile it out for you in good shape.' . . . A. I asked Mr. Miller then what he wanted for the place, and he told me that he wanted $ 2,000 a year, and I says to him, 'That is cheap enough for it.' 'Well,' he says, 'I can get more for it, but I don't want to rent it to everybody.'
He also testified that the oral promise to tile the land was repeated at and just prior to the execution of the written lease. This evidence was admitted by the trial court as tending to support the allegations of the answer that the contract of lease was partly oral and partly in writing, and on the theory that it rested with the jury to say whether such contract was partly oral and partly in writing. The written lease was in ordinary form, and was complete in its terms, and was free from ambiguity. It recited the mutual undertakings of the parties, and purported to set forth the mutual considerations of the contract.
The theory of the defendant is that the additional contract shown by parol was not in any manner inconsistent with the written lease, and that it did not therefore alter or vary it. The question is quite settled to the contrary by our previous cases. Kelly v. C., M. & St. P. Ry. Co., 93 Iowa 436; Lerch v. Sioux City Times Co., 91 Iowa 750, 60 N.W. 611.
Under the written lease the $ 2,000 rental was the consideration which the defendant agreed to pay for plaintiff's performance of the covenants of the written lease. Under the oral agreement an additional covenant was laid upon the plaintiff for the same consideration, $ 2,000. Such an increase of the burden of obligation of the contract upon the plaintiff, and of the benefit thereof upon the defendant, was necessarily an alteration of the contract, as set forth in the written lease.
The precise question was involved in the case above cited. In the Kelley case it was said:
The contract of lease is perfect in all its parts. . . . There is nothing uncertain or ambiguous in the lease, and nothing to indicate that the parties intended anything further to be done by the defendant than is stated in the lease itself. . . . The consideration for the benefit derived is expressed in the lease, and is no more subject to parol modification than any other condition therein contained. . . . He cannot be allowed to prove other and different considerations from those stated in the lease, nor enlarge upon its terms by parol testimony. . . . The law will not allow that an agreement in such case may rest partly in writing and partly in parol. So that it is equally inadmissible to add to, take from, or specifically change the terms of a written agreement by parol.
In the Lerch case, supra, the defendants sought to prove by parol that the landlord had agreed to put steam heat in the leased building. Defendant was holding under a written lease which contained no such provision, but was silent thereon. The parol evidence was held inadmissible. It was said in the opinion:
The pleading is merely of an executory agreement, and breach of it. To permit it to be proven would be to violate the well-recognized rule that parol evidence is not admissible to alter or vary a written contract. Its effect would be to ingraft onto the contract a new provision, foreign to any of the terms.
We need not cite the multitude of cases which announce the general rule excluding parol evidence. Special attention is directed to the cases above cited because they apply the rule specifically to the mutual considerations of a written lease and are directly decisive of...
To continue reading
Request your trial