LETTERS FROM A LAWYER.
The Temple.
My dear Dorothy,—I was very sorry to hear that your holiday had commenced in such a disastrous manner; but you were quite justified in leaving the furnished house which you had taken for a month at the end of the first week, when you found that the drainage was in a defective condition.
It is all very well for the landlord to threaten Gerald with proceedings to recover his rent for the three weeks which you didnotstay at his house. There is an implied condition in the letting of a furnished house that it shall be reasonably fit for habitation; if it is not fit, the tenant may leave without notice.
No one could possibly assert that a house whose drainage was out of order was fit for habitation; so that, if your landlord is ill-advised enough to bring an action against you, you need have no fear of the result. But I fancy that he is only trying it on, and will abandon his claim when he finds that you are determined to resist it.
It was fortunate for him that you did not stay on in his house and contract typhoid fever, or something of the kind. If one of you had done so, you might have taken action against the landlord for damages and compensation.
What I have just written only applies to the hire of a furnished house. The law on the letting of furnished lodgings is quite different. There is no implied warranty that the lodgings shall continue fit for habitation during the term.
I know of a case where a friend of mine took lodgings at the seaside for his wife and family, and while they were staying there one of the landlady’s children became ill with scarlet fever; but, as she did not wish to lose her lodgers, the landlady concealed the fact of her child’s having the fever from my friend. The consequence was that my friend’s wife and child also became stricken with the fever, and he was put to a lot of expense for medical attendance, nursing, etc. But he was unsuccessful in an action which he brought to recover such expenses as damages, because the jury found that the house was healthy at the time of the letting. And the judges of the Appeal Court laid down the axiom that there is no implied agreement in the letting of furnished lodgings that they shall continue fit for habitation.
If a landlady were to let out lodgings knowing that one of the inmates of her house was suffering from an infectious disease, I have no doubt that she would render herself liable to a claim for damages if one were subsequently brought against her; and it may give you, my dear Dorothy, some satisfaction to learn that she would certainly be liable to a criminal prosecution involving a heavy fine or imprisonment.
“Trespassers will be prosecuted” is a notice which one frequently sees in the country; but it is an empty threat. Provided you are careful to do no damage to the grass, you may trespass as much as you please. Very often you will find such notices stuck up in fields over which there is a right of way. In such cases the notice simply means that you should keep to the footpath and not trample down the grass. It has been said that it is no offence to take mushrooms, blackberries, primroses, or wild plants of any kind or to trespass to find them.
Of course this only applies to mushrooms which are growing wild; but it still applies even when such mushrooms may be a source of profit to the owner of the field, provided they are growing wild and not in a state of cultivation.
At the same time I ought to warn you that the farmers do not regard things in a purely legal light, and they generally manage to make themselves exceedingly unpleasant to the people whom they find trespassing over their lands. I am bound to say that personally I sympathise with the farmer to a certain extent.
The law does not regard professors of palmistry with a favourable eye; on the contrary, it is inclined to class them as “rogues and vagabonds,” although it is true that a prosecution of two professors of the art in Yorkshire was not upheld on appeal and the conviction was quashed. I do not think, however, that the followers of the art have much cause to congratulate themselves on this decision as, at any rate, the London magistrates have a very summary method of disposing of those who are brought before them charged with practising “certain subtle crafts, means and devices by way of palmistry, and imposing upon Her Majesty’s subjects.”
Your affectionate cousin,Bob Briefless.