Bardley v. Rhines' Administrators

Mr. Lucas, for the plaintiff in error: 1. Neither in point of fact nor law was this lease a chose in action. A lease and the term created by it, so far as the tenants are concerned, constitute a chattel real, and so far as the landlord is concerned, they are but a part of his original eatate in the premises leased. Had a sum of money been due from the tenants to Breeden & Co. as rent, and had Breeden & Co. continued to be the owners of the lands leased, and simply assigned to the plaintiff the lease as the evidence of the debt due by the tenants for such rent in arrears, it would, under those circumstances, have been a case of an assignment of a chose in action merely.