Stout v. Stoppel

• Decision Date: 15 December 1882
• Citation: 30 Minn. 56
• Parties: JAMES C. STOUT <I>vs.</I> GEORGE STOPPEL.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

30 Minn. 56

JAMES C. STOUT vs. GEORGE STOPPEL.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

December 15, 1882.

Plaintiff agreed with defendant to take a lease from him of a certain store. Before the lease was drawn, the plaintiff, with the permission of defendant, placed in the store certain counters and shelving necessary for a drug store. When the lease was to be executed, the parties could not agree as to the terms, and it was not completed. Plaintiff sought to remove the fixtures and shelving, and defendant refused to allow him to do so.

This action was brought in the district court for Olmsted county, to recover for the conversion, by the defendant, of the fixtures and shelving, and, after a trial before Start, J., and a jury, plaintiff had a verdict. Defendant appeals from an order refusing a new trial.

Chas. C. Willson, for appellant.

Jones & Gove, for respondent.

MITCHELL, J.

This is an action to recover the value of certain shelving and counters, the personal property of plaintiff, and alleged to have been wrongfully converted by defendant. The two points urged by defendant here, as well as in the court below, are (1) that the property which is the subject of the action being attached to and a part of the realty, this form of action will not lie; (2) that the plaintiff having annexed the property to the building of defendant while occupying it as his tenant, and having failed to remove it during his term, it became, under a familiar rule of law, the absolute property of defendant.

As well suggested by the court below, the difficulty with this argument is that it assumes that the property was a fixture, and became a part of the realty, and that the relation of landlord and tenant existed between the parties. These were the precise questions in issue under the pleadings and in dispute under the evidence, and which were submitted, under proper instructions, to the jury. Therefore their verdict necessarily establishes the facts that the relation of landlord and tenant never existed between the parties, and that the property was put in the building by plaintiff by the permission of defendant, and under an agreement on his part that plaintiff might remove it at any time, and therefore that it never became a part of the realty, but preserved its character as the personal property of the plaintiff. It moreover appears that it was capable of being severed and removed without material injury to the building. The verdict is, in our opinion, amply sustained by the evidence.

The general rule which obtains where the common-law distinctions between the different forms of action are preserved,...