Post-nuptial agreement: her property remains hers.
She's careless during the marriage-- allowing the assets to get mingled.
The statute says to honor post-nuptial agreements unless they are "unfair." What is unfair? This one is certainly not shocking: neither spouse is left out in the cold. Note that the whole point of such an agreement is to permit some degree of inequality: if there were no agreement, the assets would be divided equally.
The first section of the marital property statute says "this section is remedial, and should be liberally construed to achieve its ends." Is the point of §§766-767 equality? The court seems to be kind of straining here over the question of whether the terms of agreement are inequitable (was it when written vs. later on). The agreement and its terms seem legitimate when written.
Note that in a martial contract, you don't need consideration. Spouses can make agreements to have or not have any marital property (essentially an opt-out clause), and those agreements will be binding on both spouses, even without consideration. Unless it's unconscionable when made.
Now, Werner may not even meet the threshold for having worked to improve the financeS: it was probably Baird doing most of the work.
The Mixing section of the marital property definition is probably Werner's strongest statutory argument. If you mix things so they can't be traced, they become marital property. But can it really be traced? Maybe not down to the penny, but 50-50 split is fairly nuts,
So, ironically, the technicalities of marital property came back to bite the wife: she loses, on the basis of a statute designed to protect women at divorce time.
Jacques should stand in favor of Melitta: we protect owners. Jezo would have been a good case, but it's more or less explicitly overruled by marital property. Still both Melitta, and the mother, do not want this property going to Werner. And that should be honored. Smith's Estate also, is frustrated here.
Werner could argue, however, that we don't have to protect property owners in Germany: we'd actually like to have that money in WI. This has failed in the past. And when the Opels go to all that trouble to make so much money, we want them to have assurance the it will go where they want.
Free contract: she didn't contract not to co-mingle.
Werner: she could have protected this property. She got a lawyer's advice. She could have prevented co-mingling. Her ownership claim goes only so far as she is diligent.
Still, we don't know how much effort it would take to un-mingle the things? Suppose Werner was an accounting professor. On the one hand, of course he would do the accounting for the family. At the same time, he'd know exactly how to make it impossible to trace. Of course, this is hypothetical.
Prince Rupert was a royalist general in the civil war. He was pretty famous as a no-holds-barred military leader. Not mild mannered at all. He invented an automatic weapon. He did have to leave England (for Canada), and founded the Hudson's Bay Company. An interestinc character.
A pitiful matter of form: he should have said if all the soldiers are German. If that were the case, then you wouldn't be able to sue them.
But even so, he loses, based on pure contract: if you wanted to protect against occupation, that should be in the contract.
What is a lease? An interest in land: the right to occupy the land. So Jane got what he bargained for. On the other hand, it's also a contract: so then contract expectations might come into play (i.e., the ability to pay rent was contingent on occupation of the land). So it's important in this case to know whether a lease is a contract doctrine or a property doctrine, or a tort doctrine. The trouble is that it's all three.
If this is an interest in land, it was probably drafted by Paradine. So how do we construe ambiguities? Against the maker. And why should the tenant bear the whole weight of Rupert's invasion: rent isn't just the cost of property, it's also profit.
Also laches: why did landlord wait for years, so that the amount would be unpayable?
What if our dominant interest were getting rid of Prince Rupert? Who should win then? On the one hand, the landlord has the strongest interest in the land, and also perhaps the greatest capability for expelling Rupert. But on the other hand, the landlord already has an interest-- we'd want to mobilize the local tenants.
What if the tenant wins? What then? Well, landlords will have to raise their costs in order to insure against the possibility of invasion. This will make it so that no one tenant has to bear such a disproportionate share of the total.
Landlord can rely on certainty, also. Shouldn't he get his rent if there's bad weather, or a bad harvest, or a negligent farmer? Mutuality, also. If tenant made a huge killing because of awesome farm skillz, the rent would stay the same. Why should landlord's have all the risk?
We want land used, so we want landlords to want to rent. If we let this tenant off, others will want out.
And then when he died, he was insolvent (i.e., debts exceeded assets), so his estate was also insolvent. The estate manager's function (executrix, his widow) is to find all the debts, pay them off, and distribute remaining assets to heirs (the widow, probably, in this case). She, on the advice of her lawyer, most likely, renounced under the will (it's rare, but you can just reject the property). Why do this? Because she's not going to get anything, and then the property passes intestate, however, because she's not taking under the will, her dower rights apply.
She therefore gets 1/3 of his real property (the house and the brewery next door). And as executrix, she sells off the house and the brewery to a bidder (a straw person) for $350. To the estate, the assets are worth nothing: the money just goes to creditors. This looks like a deal in fraud of the creditors. A modern bankruptcy court would upset this fraudulent transaction. The straw person promptly turned around and resold the property to Pabst brewery. Pabst paid $95,000 for this, and thought it had title free and clear to both the house and the brewery.
Presumably the straw person paid some (or all) of that money over to the family. You'd think the creditors would be howling mad over this, but the first case doesn't arise for about 20 years, until 1896, when the children sue, saying that the executrix breached her fiduciary duty. As a result, they say they should get both the house and the Pabst brewery. The court agrees that mom breached her fiduciary duty to the estate, and therefore she could convey only what she owned, not the entire property. So only the dower rights got transferred (a life estate in 1/3 of the house and the brewery). Effectively, in other words, Pabst bought the Brooklyn bridge: the family still owns most of the house and Pabst. The court will upset the sale, but won't let the children prevail on the brewery: laches. Pabst has become an industrial titan in the elapsed 20 years. Also, the dirty hands doctrine: the family has been excessively crafty here. So Pabst keeps the brewery, but the children do get their mother's interest in the house when she dies.
So all that was prior to the case at hand.
The mansion is buldozed to make a parking lot for 20 cars (apparently a more valuable use of the land).
The children aren't landlords and Pabst isn't a tenant, but they sue on the basis of waste. This isn't a landlord-tenant case, but the doctrine of waste attaches to all real property: no one can waste the real property of another person. If the injury to property is waste (neither injury nor waste is defined in the statutes), but waste gets double damages.
So the question here is: is this waste?
Whenever you hear "the totality of the circumstances," it's a sign that we're going to diverge from hornbook law. The circumstances, in this case, were pretty seedy. "Meliorating waste" is coined: waste which will not be treated as waste. So the kids get a 20-car parking lot when the mom dies. Which they'll sell, probably for not very much.
Possibly Pabst is not fully clean-handed in this case, incidentally. They might have been wise to the straw-man deal, otherwise they might not have forked out the money so willingly (and without a good understanding of title).
We want property used, though: adverse possession is a great example of this.
What would the damages be, in this case? And why give double-damages for waste, when we do only single damages for injury?
On the other hand, if waste means anything, buldozing the property has just got to fall within that standard. So, like Avakian, if this isn't waste, we no longer know the meaning of what waste is.
Also, in Jacques, there was $100K in damages when there was no waste.
On the other hand, Pabst should have known that this deal was odd. Plus, egalite suggests we should protect individuals against companies.
Property, note, is not fungible: each piece is unique, and its value isn't just dollars: it's got emotional attachments. Plus, if we say that this isn't waste: this is going to send a chill to a lot of property owners, especially landlords. On the other hand, there was no contract not to commit waste: Pabst was not party to a lease.
Instead of huffing and puffing and negotiating, the landlord goes to court. And that makes the tenants consult a lawyer, who looks up WI law, and finds that there are consumer protection statutes regulating unfair landlord-tenant negotiations, viz the clause that says "if we go to court you get my legal fees." That department is empowered to regulate "unfair" practices. What does that mean? If the legislature wants to identify behavior it wants to punish in WI, go ahead-- it shouldn't just delegate authority to a non-accountable agency. Many states don't allow this broad delegation, but WI does.
WI is a "delegation state," like many states, and the Feds.
Note that if landlord loses, then even though the tenant's power in bargaining just went up, the value of security deposits to landlords declines. Something has got to give, so everybody's rents go up.
Also, the nature of precedent. The court cites Siemens saying that whenever we can, we sever bad contracts from otherwise decent contracts. So we could have just eliminated this clause, but the court decides not to try to save contracts. Landlords could say that you can't just get rid of Siemens so easily: punitive damages are alien to contract law. Also, just like in criminal law, in essentially punitive matters, precedent should be treated especially reverently.
Also, in general, private enforcement of regulations is a mistake. We want our law enforced by the agencies themselves, and there are lots of good reasons for this: separation of powers, for one. When we deal with clauses in leases via litigation, we're substituting jury/judicial decisions for the intent of the regulatory agency (which is maybe politically accountable, whereas the courts are not). The courts are displacing the executive branch here: they're usurping the agency's prerogative.
If the plaintiff wins, then plaintiffs have no incentive to compromise: they know they win, and can therefore run up attorney fees. Because why not? So there's no moderation, and no reason to try to resolve things amicably. It also encourages litigation.
Additionally, we don't like intimidation and force. That's why we void the clause on the one hand, but having done so, we turn right around and terrorize the landlord, by imposing so much badness. Actually, we don't like litigation in general: it's expensive, lengthy, etc. As a general rule, we want to settle things short of litigation where possible.
Now let's talk about the tenant.
Well, we don't honor illegal contracts, and this is one of those. And the folks we want to protect are tenants in general, not these particular breachers. We don't want illegal contracts slipping by.
We want to encourage the landlort to mitigate: they need to have an incentive to seek out other tenants.
Strictly enforcing such a contract would preclude efficient breaches of leases.
Egality: we like to reward tenants more than landlords. The perspective we see things in tends to color the way we view cases and precedents.
Re: private enforcement. Agencies are busy, and won't be able to chase after every lease dispute. We need zealous representation for individual cases, and those involved have the most motivation. The alternative (giant, really powerful enforcement agencies) is more intimidating than we want.
Landlords over-withold on a security deposit. Double damages would only be $222. That would be OK.
But then the attorney comes in with a $14K bill. On a suit for $222. Whoah. It gets reduced to $3875. That's still many times the amount of the award for the plaintiffs.
So this case probably only went to court because of the lure of attorney's fees. And don't forget that the landlord's attorney was billing also. And then both sides litigated an appeal.
This is monumentally inefficient. And the bulk of the money comes out of the landlord-tenant industry, even though we want more and better housing (which this undermines).
So landlords look at this and say: wowie-- they probably lost about 10 years worth of profits on that apartment. Not a good encouragement to stay in business.
So, what does the Constitution say about eviction? In literal terms, nothing. But due process talks about depriving property. That gets ignored by the court. Equal protection, however, is interesting, and 14A says no state can override it.
What's unequal here? First, the speed of the action: everything else takes all sorts of time, but this is super-fast. Second, there's no chance to raise the defense of implied warranty. We're depriving tenants of these rights.
Supreme Court rulings on equal protection are tricky and contradictory. But basically, the idea is that discriminatory legislation targeting some discrete class is illegal. Where a statute discriminates against a group which is a suspect category (race, religion, nationality, and sometimes gender, and pretty much nothing else), it gets special negative treatment in the courts, and gets subjected to strict scrutiny, which it can not pass unless there is a compelling state interest with a narrowly tailored remedy.
But who consumes low-income housing? Suspect groups. High-income rentals tend not to be uninhabitable. The USSC waffles a bit on whether wealth is a suspect category, and generally says it's not. Still, this is basically indirect race discrimination. And maybe gender (single moms with kids are disproportionately affected).
If you pass the strict scrutiny test, you still have to pass the rational basis test. There has to be a basis in reason for the statute. Now legislatures don't pass statutes at random-- they're usually rational. This is a really easy test (opposite of strict scrutiny): if someone could find that it's rational, we're OK.
But there are cases where the statute isn't discriminatory, but instead touches on a basic right (e.g., the right to vote). If a right infringed is fundamental, however, we're back with strict scrutiny (the right to vote, to migrate, to receive welfare some of the time, not to have one's body invaded-- as in sterilization for prisoners).
But you could make the argument that all rights are fundamental, of course, and therefore all statutes should get strict scrutiny. Or, alternatively, you could claim that fundamental rights are pretty few. In the Warren Court era, the court found fundamental rights once or twice a year. As a result, legislatures got mad: what are we here for, if we're always subject to judicial oversight? So there was a reaction to this trend, and the court began to cut back on fundamental rights. Here, therefore, housing. This is not a fundamental right, it seems.
So we can't say to landlords both "no self-help in evicting tenants," and "you can't charge rent in these situations," without having a decent and timely remedy. That's rationally based.
Undue economic harm to landlords harms future tenants. Again, that's rational.
All of this is superficial, though. The real issue is this: is this a rational basis case, or a compelling interest (i.e., fundamental right) case?
This is a compelling state interest only if housing is a fundamental right.
So property ownership is a fundamental right: you can't take it without due process, and the 5a takings clause talks about the payment required when property is taken.
So why not have a fundamental right to housing? The key here is not whether or not there is such a right, but who *says* there is such a right. Oughtn't the legislature to define it? The courts could say whether or not the right has been violated (i.e., I claim my right to a 10K ft^2 mansion, and sue for it).
Tenant side. The courts are the ones who enforce individual rights. Judicial power (Article 3) is the power to protect individuals and exploited groups from unfair domination by legislature.
1936-7: USSC almost abolished. Since then, they've been very cautious about excercising activist powers. So pragmatically, the court doesn't have this power, and theoretically it shouldn't, but then who does represent the very poor?
What would happen if housing were a fundamental right? Well, why would any occupant of a crummy apartment ever pay rent? Then landlords will quit (low income ones anyhow). Then the government will have to step in and coerce people to provide housing.
First, on the side of the dissent (Douglas), you could argue that 1A bears on this: any person can petition for redress of grievances (this means access to court). What kind of access is this, if it's such a quick and summary turnaround. Another policy: access to government. This would favor plaintiff a bit.
On the majority side, now.
The courts should not pretend that some judicially located source imposes a minimum standard of housing. The court has limited powers (very little real power: just persuasion, and this works only for as long as people go along with them). So you could actually undermine what authority the courts have by going this way.
Also, the court doesn't have any money. If it declares that 30M people (or whatever) are in substandard housing, they're misleading everyone but savvy lawyers into thinking that the problem is solved. This leads to disillusionment, and it also exacerbates the problem by allowing the legislature to devote resources elsewhere (because the public's attention goes elsewhere).
Also, if the courts undertake to make decisions about what standards are mandatory, it looks like all the big decisions are made in the court. But this is ostensibly a democratic society, and the courts are not elected, so they've shifted power away from an electorally accountable body. Also, lobbyists will start chasing the courts. We want courts, not non-elected legislatures.
Also, Federalism. This ought to be a state matter, at the highest. No point in DC making decisions for OR about landlord-tenant matters.
And precedent: it would be a very novel result to say, 200 years after the fact, to discover that the Constitution mandates a standard of housing. Courts should not amend the Constitution. Actually, the Constitution says how to do it, and it's not easy. We don't want the fundamental law of the land changing just on the whim on 9 people on the USSC.
Those factors make the case fairly easy. But the date is significant: 1929 is long before the formal concept of implied warranty of hability. But the WI courts anticipated it all the same.
Also, these rules are in the tenant's lease (and therefore probably also the neighbor's). Plus, the landlord makes no attempt to mitigate (i.e., find someone else after the tenant leaves). And on top of it all, the landlord, in contracting with the neighbor, takes some responsibility for the neighbor's conduct (i.e., it should conform to the contract).
It's a phyrric victory, though: tenants don't want to leave. They want to stay.
The court says there's an implied warranty of quiet enjoyment. That's important language. "Quiet enjoyment" means that nobody will contest the title, not that it will be quiet. Nevertheless, the court coins the term "constructive eviction," to indicate such disruption to the tenant that it is as though the landlord evicted the tenant. Basically, if you let things get to the point where the tenant leaves, it's your problem.
Note that this overrules Paradine, as it were.
First off, this is why we have the statute of frauds, and the parol evidence rule: people easily misremember details of oral agreements. We want stuff like this in writing.
Three categories of problems: petty (e.g., broken railing), serious but obvious (e.g., broken toilet), perhaps serious and not obvious (e.g., defective wiring). All possible defects are here. Plus layers and mounds of dirt.
Note that the person defining the options (immediate cure, condemnation, or destruction of the house) is not the court: it's the building inspector. Now he's supposed to be good at inspecting buildings, but it's not obvious that he should have the authority to say what should happen when they're bad.
Note that §704.07(4) is said not to apply (the "hazardous to health" issue). The statute says "any condition hazardous to health." So why not apply that statute? We've got hazards galore. They give no reason: they just say "we doubt" it applies, and moves on. At this point, it looks like the tenant is about to get creamed. If the court wanted to, they could have made this a simple statutory case (and had the same major outcome) easily. But they want to go off on their own, for some reason.
Other ways (besides the one that the court siezes on) that the court could find for the plaintiff? Furnished apartments are better protected than unfurnished ones: these were generally vacation properties, and they came with warranties, per English precedent. The court doesn't go that way, though, in spite of this "furnishings for students" language.
Maybe there was also an express warranty: does "suitable for student housing" refer to the furnishings or to the house? Not clear from the punctuation. The absence of the second comma suggests that the express warranty applies to the furnishings, not the house. So the court doesn't take that easy way out.
Exceptions to the parol evidence rule: to flesh out the terms of an ambiguous written contract (i.e., if the contract is clear, no oral evidence allowed). All they'd have to argue is that the contract is ambiguous, and then we could let the evidence in. The other exception is part performance: if the contract is partly performed, oral statements can be used.
So the court had four ways to find for the tenants, all of which were rejected in favor of the implied warranty of habitability.
A problem with the "implied warranty of habitability" theory: prior to this case, it didn't even exist.
The court says it doesn't want to follow the caveat emptor principle, which has been in effect for about 500 years. They call it "an obnoxious legal cliche." That's pretty agressive of them. They say that policy has changed, though, and they will follow the equity of the policy.
Nowadays, if any condition violates a housing code, the tenants can either leave or abate the rent. (i.e., they have to pay "fair rent"). Note that most tenants don't have the desire, or the mobility to just walk away: they want *THIS* apartment to work out. "Fair rent" is a funny concept, though: market value might be fair rent. So if you can find a comparably messy apartment for cheaper, why didn't the tenants go there in the first place?
Anyway, why else might we find for the tenants? The landlord lied (about owning the house, and then about cleaning up the house), and we don't like liars. But why shouldn't tenants do the fixing? Partly because the landlord gets the long-term benefits of the repairs. And because the landlord has the long-term interest here, the landlord can borrow to make the repairs. Tenants don't have mortgage capabilities. Also, because of their business knowledge, they'll be better able to bargain with workers. Finally, the landlord can amortize the cost across all the tenants, not just the luckless ones who have the worst damages in their apartments.
This case also runs contrary to Lindsey: if you don't provide the premises, you can't collect the rent. Plus, it's a contract of adhesion: the tenants can't negotiate the terms of the lease.