Lease dispute; Whether property is personal property or a fixture; Ottaco, Inc v Gauze; Department of Transp v Gilling; Assignment of rights; Burkhardt v Bailey; Distinguishing Davidson v Crump Mfg Co; Tenant by sufferance; Marks v Corliss’ Estate; Premature dismissal; Peterson Novelties, Inc v City of Berkley

The court held that the trial court did not err by granting defendant summary disposition of plaintiff’s claims. Plaintiff sued defendant alleging claim and delivery, statutory conversion, and common-law conversion, arising out of a lease it signed with non-party IDIG, which leased the property from non-party Birnbaum. The trial court dismissed the case with prejudice. On appeal, the court rejected plaintiff’s argument that “the trial court erred in several ways when it granted defendant’s motion for summary disposition.” First, plaintiff’s “argument that the master lease favored [its] position is not convincing. Even if the [alterations] provision did define the property at issue as personal property rather than alterations or fixtures, plaintiff fails to acknowledge that it was not a party to the master lease, but was rather an unauthorized subtenant. Plaintiff was not an assignee of IDIG’s rights under the master lease or otherwise entitled to enforce the provisions of the master lease against defendant.” In addition, the “master lease provision clearly indicates that all of the tenant’s rights to property on the premises would end at the lease’s expiration unless it was removed prior to that time.” The master lease, compared to the lease in Davidson, was “much less specific about the tenant’s entitlements, but did specifically provide that unremoved property would be treated as abandoned and therefore subject to the landlord’s retention.” Second, whether “plaintiff was an unauthorized subtenant or an unauthorized assignee, it did not acquire any rights under the master lease and was not a tenant who came ‘rightfully into possession of land by permission of the owner.’ Although it does appear that plaintiff may have been wronged in this situation, plaintiff has not established that any of the fault lies with defendant. In any event, because plaintiff has not established that it was a tenant by sufferance, the trial court did not err by not declining to treat plaintiff as such.” Third, while plaintiff theorized “that Birnbaum and defendant negotiated behind the scenes to purchase the premises and deprive plaintiff of its personal property, and that discovery could have uncovered evidence supporting that theory,” this theory was “mere conjecture.” Affirmed.