Opinion
November 27, 1951.
Appeal from the Circuit Court for Dade County, J.N. Morris, J.
Louis Glick, Miami, for appellant.
Goldstein, Klein, Burris Lehrman, Miami Beach, for appellee.
This is an appeal from a final decree adjudicating the rights of the parties under a lease agreement, and particularly their rights in and to a "security deposit" of $10,000 paid by the lessee to the lessor.
By stipulation of the parties, the cause was heard by a Special Master, who found that the lessee, appellant here, was entitled to the balance remaining in the security fund after deducting therefrom the amounts owing to the lessor as rent and as attorney's fees incurred by the lessor when it instituted eviction suits against the lessee, and that the lessor was not entitled to reimbursement for a claimed deficiency in inventory. The Master further found that the lessee should be credited with the sum of $2,000, representing the value of venetian blinds and other items of personalty brought on the premises by her and left there at the request of the lessor. The total amount due the lessee, as determined by the Master, was $3,300.
The Chancellor, however, sustained the lessor's exceptions to the Master's Report and decreed that, after charging against the deposit the amounts owing to the lessor for rent, inventory deficiency, and attorney's fees, there still remained the sum of $652.87 due and owing to the lessor by the lessee. The lessee has appealed from such final decree.
The final decree made no mention of the lessee's claim for reimbursement for the venetian blinds and other items of personalty brought on the premises by her and left there at the request of the lessor, and must be held, then, to have denied the lessee's right to be reimbursed therefor. The lessor does not deny that it agreed to pay the lessee $2,000 for such items, if she would leave them on the premises. The lessor contends, however, that under the terms of the lease the lessee was obligated to surrender such items to the lessor upon the termination of the lease, and that such promise was therefore without consideration and invalid, even if enforceable in the instant proceedings.
The lease did not expressly provide that all personalty on the premises, whether inventory or non-inventory, should be surrendered to the lessor at the termination of the lease. It did provide, however, that "the Lessee hereby pledges and assigns to the Lessors all equipment, machinery, furniture, furnishings, fixtures, goods, chattels and appurtenances, which may be brought or placed upon the demised premises, or used in connection with the operation of the same, as security for the payment of the rental herein reserved and the performance of the covenants, terms and conditions hereof;" and, when construed as a whole, we think that the lease authorized the lessor to retain so much of the non-inventory items of personalty on the premises as was necessary to secure to it its rent and the performance of the other covenants by the lessee; but we do not think that, in equity and good conscience, the lessor was entitled under the lease to retain more of such non-inventory items than would be necessary to make the lessor whole.
The record shows that the venetian blinds were non-inventory items; and they appear to have been treated as personalty by the parties. It is not here contended that the other items of personalty were replacements of inventory, and we think it may be safely assumed that they, also, were non-inventory items. In declaring the rights of the parties under the lease, then, the Chancellor should have credited the lessee with the value of the non-inventory items of personalty left on the premises by the lessee, at lessor's request, and for which he agreed to reimburse the lessee.
The other questions presented by the appellant have been considered, but no further error in the decree appealed from has been found.
For the reasons stated, however, the decree is reversed and the cause remanded for the entry of a decree in conformance with this opinion.
Reversed and remanded with directions.
SEBRING, C.J., TERRELL, J., and DICKINSON, Associate Justice, concur.