Haines v. Roberts

Citations

• 57 Pa. Super. 227
• 1914 Pa. Super. LEXIS 181

Syllabus

<p>Evidence — Custom.—Slate quarry lease — Royalties—Mines and mining.</p> <p>Where a lease for the operation of a slate quarry provides that the lessees shall pay for “all slate mined and manufactured by them, including every description of material taken and sold from said demised premises, a royalty of eight per cent,” and the lease further provides for the payment of such royalty on a specified day in each month, the terms of the lease as to the payment of royalties are not ambiguous; and evidence is not admissible of a custom prevailing in the district by which royalty was calculated on prices at which the slate sold at the quarry, plus what it would have cost to deliver the same at a railroad station some distance away; and all the more is such evidence inadmissible where the witnesses called to prove the custom could not state that the leases of other quarries where they alleged the custom prevailed were identical in terms with the lease in question.</p>