WASTE. Spoil or destruction, done or per mitted, to lands, houses, or other corporeal hereditaments, by the tenant thereof to the prejudice of the heir or of him in reversion or remainder.
"Any unauthorized act of a tenant for a freeehold estate not of inheritance, or for any lessor interest, which tends to the de struction of the tenement, or otherwise to the injury of the inheritance." Poll. Torts 327.
An unreasonable or improper use, abuse, mismanagement or omission of duty touching real estate by one rightfully in possession which results in its substantial injury. De lano v. Smith, 206 Mass. 365, 92 N. E. 500, 30 L. R. A. (N. S.) 474.
Many of the earliest English statutes re lated to waste (Marlborough, Gloucester, etc.); the Year Books contain many decisions upon them which are the basis of the modern law. 3 Holdsw. Hist. E. L. 104.
Permissive waste consists in the mere neg lect or omission to do what will prevent in jury : as, to suffer a house to go to decay for the want of repair. And it may be in curred in respect to the soil, as well as to the buildings, trees, fences, or live stock on the premises. See infra.
Voluntary waste consists in the commis sion of some destructive act : as, in pulling ( down a house or ploughing up a flower-gar den. Gardiner v. Derring, 1 Paige, Ch. (N. Y.) 573.
Equitable waste may be defined as such acts as at law would not be esteemed to be waste under the circumstances of the case, but which in the view of a court of equity are so esteemed from their manifest injury to the inheritance, although they are not inconsistent with the legal rights of the par ty committing them. 2 Story, Eq. JOr. § 915.
Where a tenant "without impeachment of waste" commits acts of wanton destruction, it has been called equitable waste because such acts were cognizable only in equity. Jenks, Mod. Land L. 44.
Voluntary waste is committed upon culti vated fields, orchards, gardens, meadows, •and the like, whenever a tenant uses them contrary to the usual course of husbandry or in such a manner as to exhaust the soil by negligent or improper tillage; Livingston v. Reynolds, 2 Hill (N. Y.) 157; 2 B. & P. 86.
It is, therefore, waste to convert arable into wood land, or the contrary ; Co. Litt. 53 b. Cutting down fruit-trees, although planted by the tenant himself, is waste; 2 Rolle, Abr. 817; and it was held to be waste for an out going tenant of garden-ground to plough up strawberry-beds which he had bought of a former tenant when he entered ; 1 Camp. 227. When lands are leased on which there are open mines of metal or coal, or pits of gravel, lime, clay, brick, earth, stone, and the like, the tenant may dig out of such mines or pits; but he cannot open any new mines or pits without being guilty of waste ; Co. Litt. 53 b; Sayers v. Hoskinson, 110 Pa. 473, 1 Atl. 308. See MINES ; OIL. Any carrying away of the soil is also waste ; Coin. Dig. TVaste (D 4); Kidd v. Dennison, 6 Barb. (N. Y.) 13; Co. Litt. 53 b ; 1 Sch. & L. 8. And so is the tak ing of clay from the soil and manufacturing it into bricks and selling the same ; Univer sity v. Tucker, 31 W. Va. 621, 8 S. E. 410; 13 Q. B. 591. A tenant in common who quar ries stone from the common property is guilty of waste ; Childs v. R. Co., 117 Mo. 414, 23 S. W. 373; and a life tenant who unlawfully removes petroleum ; Williamson v. Jones, 39 W. Va. 231, 19 S. E. 436, 25 L. M. A. 222; so sowing the seed of a noxious plant was held waste; 2 Madd. Ch. 62 ; and inoculating a building with the germs of small-pox ; Delano v. Smith, 206 Mass. 365, 92 N. E. 500, 30 L. R. A. (N. S.) 474.
Waste need not consist in loss of market value ; it may be an injury in the sense of destroying identity ; L. R. 20 Eq. 539. Where premises leased for 99 years were sublet for a dumping ground, and there was conflicting evidence as to whether the added material increased the value of the land, an injunc tion' was granted on the ground that it al tered the premises ; [1900] 1 Ch. 624; an in junction was refused against converting a store into a dwelling house ; [1892] 2 Ch. 213.