Ballard v. Alaska Theatre Co.

Citations

• 93 Wash. 655
• 161 P. 478

Syllabus

<p>Fixtures — Landlord and Tenant — Trade Fixtures. Under a fifteen-year lease of premises upon which the lessee agreed to erect a theater building to cost not less than a certain sum, and to pay a fixed rental for the term, the usual furnishings, which were not mentioned in the lease, such as removable electric fixtures, opera chairs, picture machines and screen, carpets and furnishings for the ladies' dressing room, of a perishable nature, are not fixtures.</p> <p>Same. A clause in such a lease requiring the lessee to yield up the premises in a “good tenantable condition” does not contemplate that the building should be furnished for any particular purpose, so as to make such furnishings fixtures.</p> <p>Same. The fact that the building was constructed for a particular purpose and specially to receive the very furnishings installed, which were suitable only for this particular building or type of building, does not make the furnishings fixtures.</p> <p>Same — Landlord and Tenant — Trade Fixtures — Intent — Evidence. Whether fixtures become part of the freehold or are trade fixtures, removable by the tenant, depends upon the intent of the parties, to be inferred, when not determined by express agreement, from the nature of the article affixed, the relation and situation of the freehold after annexation, the manner and purpose of the annexation, considered in the light of the ordinary rules applicable to landlord and tenant.</p> <p>Same- — -Annexation — Presumptions. As between landlord and tenant, the presumption is that the tenant did not intend to enrich the freehold by annexing fixtures.</p> <p>Same — Landlord and Tenant — Trade Fixtures — Annexation — ' Removal — Evidence. Opera chairs and a vacuum cleaner, placed in a theater building by a tenant, and purchased under conditional sales contracts, are not fixtures that become part of the freehold, in view of the presumption that they are trade fixtures.</p> <p>Same. The same is true of a pipe organ manufactured