Burr Creamery Co. v. City of Los Angeles

This is an action to recover the amount of an interlocutory judgment which awarded the Maple Grove Creamery some five thousand dollars as damages to its leasehold interest, occasioned by the widening of a street in Los Angeles at the instance of the city. Question having arisen as to the ownership of the fund, the city of Los Angeles paid it into court, and is here but a nominal defendant. The chronological events necessary for an understanding of the controversy are the following; The owner of the land, Fannie Rusk Smith, executed a five years’ lease of the premises to the Maple Grove Creamery. The lease provided that at its expiration the property should be reappraised and the tenant, if it desired to continue its tenancy, should pay for rental seven per cent net of the value of the appraisement for the next term of five years. (This provision of the lease, it is admitted, was never enforced nor in any way put into effect.) The lease further provided that if the tenant should hold over its term with the consent, express or implied, of the landlord, “such holding shall be construed to be a tenancy only from month to month.” The defendant Los Angeles Creamery Company in 1906…