Citations
- 209 A.D. 368
Full opinion text
Young, J.:
The action is to recover compensation for use and occupation of certain premises owned by the plaintiff under the terms of a lease to defendant for the quarter from June 5, 1919, to September 4, 1919.
The premises are located in that part of the city of Bayonne, N. J., known as Constable Hook, and include upland and land under water, comprising forty-five and forty-five one-thousandths acres.
All of the essential allegations of the complaint, excepting the rental value, are admitted by the defendant’s answer.
On June 5, 1889, the plaintiff, by a lease under seal, let to one Sheehan — and Sheehan assigned the lease to Robert H. Sayre, who later assigned it to defendant — the premises in question, “ with all the appurtenances for the term of sixty years from the fifth day of June, 1889, the rental to be payable in equal quarterly payments in advance.”
The annual rent for the first twenty years (1889-1909) was fixed by the lease at $4,250. The lease then provides that the annual rental for the succeeding twenty years (1909-1929) should be fixed by arbitrators. A similar arbitration was to be had to determine the rental for the last twenty years of the term (1929-1949).
When the time came for fixing the rental for the second twenty years (1909-1929), the plaintiff and the defendant railroad company modified the original lease by a written agreement providing that the arbitrators should fix the rental for the succeeding forty years in ten-year periods, instead of the twenty-year periods provided by the lease, and the arbitrators fixed the rental at $7,500 per year.
No award fixing the rent for the ten-year period from June 5, 1919, to June 5, 1929, was ever made or delivered. Under the terms of the agreement this award was to have been made during the last half of 1918. It appears that this arbitration failed because the arbitrators appointed by the respective parties could not agree on an award or an umpire.
To meet such a situation the lease provided as follows: