White v. Wakefield

• Decision Date: 31 January 1866
• Citation: 1866 WL 4427,39 Ill. 509
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court
• Parties: HAVEN & WHITEv.JOHN WAKEFIELD et al.

39 Ill. 509

1866 WL 4427 (Ill.)

HAVEN & WHITE

v.JOHN WAKEFIELD et al.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

January Term, 1866.

OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE

APPEAL from the Circuit Court of St. Clair county.

This was a suit in chancery instituted in the court below, by John Wakefield and several others, partners, and with Otis Haven, composing a firm under the name and style of the “Summerfield Building company,” against the same Otis Haven and Charles W. White, partners, composing another firm, engaged in the business of raising broom-corn, and the manufacture of brooms therefrom.

The object of the bill was to recover from the defendants the rents which were alleged to have accrued under a lease of certain premises to them by the complainants.

The relations of the parties will appear by the following statement: The complainant, John Wakefield, with Otis Haven, and several other persons, entered into a copartnership about the 22d of August, 1854, for the purpose of building houses and making improvements in the town of Summerfield, in St. Clair county, the style of the firm being the “Summerfield Building company.”

About the same time Otis Haven and Charles W. White, who were partners in the business of raising broom-corn, and manufacturing brooms therefrom, submitted to the “Summerfield Building company” the following proposition: “ To the Summerfield Building Company,

GENTLEMEN: The undersigned propose to you as follows:

1. That if your company will build in the town of Summerfield, as near the depot as convenient and lots can be procured, a house for the purpose of a broom factory, or any other proper use, should it be necessary to change the business, one hundred feet long, fifty feet wide and three stories high, according to plan herewith submitted, to cost no more than three thousand dollars, ground included; we will rent the same of your company for five consecutive years, and pay annually a yearly rent of six hundred dollars or twenty per cent. on cost of lots and building.

2. The foregoing proposition is made on condition that, if we choose to do so, we shall have privilege at any time within two years from the day we occupy it, to pay to the company for the property, lots and buildings, the original cost with ten per cent. added to such cost, reckoning interest from the first outlay, in which case the company on payment of cost and interest shall deed the property to us.

3. The foregoing is also offered on the further condition that the building contemplated shall be erected with all convenient dispatch, and if possible finished within six weeks from this date (at least so as to begin to receive the stock in shelter).

OTIS HAVEN,

CHAS. W. WHITE.”

This proposition was accepted by the building company, who proceeded to procure a lot and to erect a building thereon. About the 10th of October, 1856, Haven & White took possession of the property, the building being still in an unfinished condition, and commenced using it for the purpose of storing broom-corn and manufacturing brooms. After the lapse of a year from the time the defendants took possession, on the 26th of March, 1858, the complainants filed their bill for the recovery of the rent which had accrued, alleging that Haven & White had not in the mean time purchased the premises. The defendants answered the bill, and, among other things, insisted that it was insufficient in law to entitle the complainants to the relief sought, because:

1. The agreement relied upon, as set out in the bill, was not a lease, and did not constitute a letting of the house, but was only an agreement for a lease binding plaintiffs upon certain conditions, which might never be performed, to lease a house which was to be thereafter built upon ground thereafter to be purchased; the subject of the contract not being in existence there could be no present letting.

2. By the complainants' own showing, their suit was premature, having been instituted before a right of action had accrued, the fact being, as appeared from the complainants' own showing, that the plaintiffs had two years in which to determine whether they would purchase the property by paying the original cost with ten per cent. interest from first outlay, which two years had not elapsed when the bill was filed, the 26th of March, 1858, and it is not alleged in the bill that the plaintiffs occupied the house before October, 1856.

The defendants at the same time filed their cross-bill, in which they represented that they had become partners for the purpose of growing and harvesting broom-corn, and manufacturing brooms, and in the prosecution of the business they had rented a large farm near the town of Summerfield, for the term of five years from the 10th of April, 1856, at a yearly rent of $600, and in the spring planted a crop of about seventy acres of broom-corn. In the month of August following, when the defendants were about to erect a building on the farm for the purpose of storing and manufacturing the corn when matured, they made the proposition before referred to, in pursuance of which the complainants in the original bill undertook to erect a building in the town of Summerfield, for the purpose indicated, within the time therein specified, and by reason of this arrangement the defendants, Haven & White, abandoned the idea of erecting a building on the farm, as they had intended.

The crop of broom-corn having matured, and it being necessary, in order to save it from loss, they commenced cutting the same about the first of October, 1856; and about the sixth of that month, the company having raised one story of the house and partly inclosed the same, though not in such a manner as to afford a sufficient shelter for the corn, having no place else to store the same, and wishing to save the same if possible, commenced putting their corn in the house so partially erected, the hands continuing from time to time to work on the building. They continued to cut and store their corn in the building until some time in the month of December following; up to which time they had stored in the building, although it was not yet in a condition to shelter and protect the same, about twenty-five tons of their corn of the value of $80 per ton. That on account of having to cut and store their corn so late in the season, they were put to much extra expense, which they would not have been subjected to but for the failure of the company to build the house as agreed, and as they had a right to expect would have been done; and that by the non-completion of the house as agreed, the plaintiffs were compelled to and did leave standing and uncut in the field five tons of corn of the value of $80 per ton, which proved an entire loss; and that, by the company having failed, during the winter of 1856, to complete the house so that the plaintiffs could have manufactured brooms therein, they were compelled to permit their corn to remain in bulk until about the first of March, 1857, by which time, by reason of the house having furnished so insufficient a shelter, the corn stored had become so damaged as to render the same almost if not quite valueless; yet, with a hope of making something out of the corn if possible, the plaintiffs, in the spring of 1857, at great expense, procured machinery and labor and caused the seed to be stripped from the corn preparatory to manufacturing the same into brooms; and, although the house was yet so unfinished as to render it unsuitable for a broom factory, as best they could made out of the best of the corn sixty dozen brooms, which, on account of the damaged condition of the corn, proved unmerchantable, and would not sell for enough to pay for making the same; finding which, the plaintiffs stopped manufacturing the same, and, having no other place to store that which was left, permitted it to remain in the house; and, still hoping to realize something from the same, and to that end only (for they had become satisfied the house would not be completed as contemplated by the agreement), planted a crop, in the spring of 1857, of forty acres, their object being to grow enough only to work up the damaged corn by mixing it with the new crop. That, out of the second crop and a portion of the best of the damaged corn, they made eight or nine hundred dozen of brooms, which, if they had been made out of such corn as was commonly used, would have been worth $2.25 per dozen, but, by reason of using the damaged corn, they were only worth, and they only realized on an average, $1.75 per dozen; that the use of the damaged corn proved of no service to the plaintiffs, for the brooms that the corn of the new crop would have made of itself would have been worth as much as the brooms made of both; that, after using of the damaged corn as stated, there was left of the same sixteen tons; the company having failed to erect the house as agreed, they were compelled to stop business in the house, and, wishing to clear the house, baled six tons of the damaged corn, and shipped it to St. Louis, which, after paying expenses, proved an entire loss; the remaining ten tons of the same they caused to be sold, after notice at public auction on the premises--and it brought ten dollars. That the complainants in the cross-bill quitted the house to the company the 13th day of August, 1858, they having been unable to do so sooner on account of their stock being in the house, and they having no place to store the same. That the house was not erected with all convenient dispatch, nor was it finished in six weeks, although it was possible for it to have deen done, nor was it within that time so finished as to begin to receive their stock in shelter, nor had the company, up to when the plaintiffs left, erected the house as required by the agreement; and that the house, so far as the same was erected...