Walsh v. Philadelphia Bourse

Citations

• 32 Pa. Super. 348
• 1907 Pa. Super. LEXIS 10

Syllabus

<p>Landlord and tenant — ü&moval of tenant’s furniture — Bailment—Distress — Office building.</p> <p>In an action of assumpsit against the owners of an office building to recover the value of office furniture leased by the plaintiff to a tenant in the building, it appeared that the plaintiff with the consent of the tenant removed the furniture from an upper floor room occupied by the tenant to the first floor, when it was forcibly seized by the defendant’s employees, and returned to the room from which it had been taken. On the same day or the following day the furniture was distrained for rent due the defendant. There was a rule of the building that all furniture and bulky packages should be carried on the freight elevator. Held, (1) that the defendant’s liability, if any, for the conversion, arose before the distress, and therefore plaintiff’s remedy by replevin was not exclusive; (2) that defendant had no right to take the goods from plaintiff’s possession, and return them to the upper room merely because they had been brought down the stairway, and not by the freight elevator; (3) that as the tenant had consented to their removal, the defendant had no right to enforce a rule of the building which was merely intended to protect the tenant from a surrejjtitious removal of the goods by a stranger; (4) that the goods in question having been in the possession of the tenant under a bailment, were not distrainable for rent, inasmuch as they had been redelivered into the possession of the bailor before the distress; (5) that the stairways, elevators and halls of the office building were not a parcel of the demised premises as far as bailors of tenants were concerned; (6) that the bailor was not bound by an agreement between the lessor and the lessee of which he had no notice that the lessees or those claiming under him should not remove the property from the building without the consent of the lessor, when rent was in arrear.</p>