Needy v. Middlekauff

¹⁸² Page, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellee, being the owner of a house situate in the city of Hagerstown, leased the north side of the same, in April, 1901, to the appellant for a term of four and half years. The controversy in this case, depending upon the construction of the terms of the lease, is whether the appellant has an exclusive right to the possession and use of a bathroom in the said building located on the north side thereof. The .appellant so claiming has taken exclusive possession of the bathroom and has locked the door, so that as it is alleged the appellee and her tenants have been and still are deprived of the use and enjoyment of the same.

The appellee has filed her bill for an injunction to restrain the appellant from so excluding the appellee and her tenants from the proper use of the room. The Court below granted the injunction and refused on motion of the appellant to dissolve the same, and from this decree the appellant has, appealed. By his answer the appellant admits the following allegations to be true: First, that the building contains two large store-rooms on the first floor, one on the north, the other on the south side, the front door entrance being in the middle, in and by which the second and third floors on the north and south sides are reached by stairways leading from floor to floor; second, that for many years past the appellee has and does still occupy rooms in the building, and has rented out rooms on the second ^nd third floors to other persons for housekeeping and lodging, and to be occupied as apartments usually are; third, that for years past there has been a bathroom at the rear end of the north side of the building on the second floor, built upon and outside of the rear end or west wall of the north side of the building, but not a part' thereof, accessible, from the second and third floors over a porch running along the south side of the northern part of the building; and that it has been always used by the occupants of the building until shut off by the appellant. It was also proved that Judge Stake, who, for several years before his death in 1902, occupied the two rooms oh the south side of the building on the ¹⁸³ second floor thereof, and about the year 1896 erected a private bathroom in the rear of and adjoining his back room, that the entrance to this room could be had only through his rooms, and not through any hall or other room.

This bathroom was never used by any one, other than the tenants of these rooms. In April, 1901, the lease of the appellee to the appellant was executed. It demises to the appellant for the term of four and a-half years, “the north side of the building known as No.-South Potomac street in Hagerstown, Md., consisting of a storeroom and five rooms on the second and third floors of the same, together with access to the same through the hall and porch — the storeroom to be used as a jewelry store and sewing machine store, and the second and third floors as a dwelling house to tenants satisfactory to the” appellee. There are no specific words showing that the lease was intended to include the bathroom on the north side of the house, and unless it be held that the general description of the north side of the building has that effect, and unless such intention can be gathered from the lease, there can exist no rights that the appellant is entitled to enforce in this proceeding.

Whether it is so included, is a matter for the determination of the Court, construing the words employed in the light of all the circumstances existing and known to the parties, at the time the instrument was executed. Roberts v. Bonaparte, 73 Md. 71 . The facts of the case show that the storeroom and the five rooms on the second and third floors were a part of a building in which were other apartments maintained by the appellee for her own use and that of her tenants. There are but two bathrooms in the building, the