he is able to obtain it, the rent ceases to be due. Likewise, if the fruit perishes before it can be harvested, its price ceases to be due. Thus, suppose a calamity prevents the leased orchard from yielding its usual benefit—for example, rainfall or river water diminishes, reducing the benefit below its customary level. The property covered by the contract must remain in a condition that allows its intended benefit to be obtained. If it ceases to be in that condition, the lessee is entitled either to rescind the contract or to receive compensation. This is not a case of remission on account of a calamity affecting what is unobtainable, as with purchased fruit; rather, it concerns the destruction or loss of the benefit intended under the contract. In this respect, the lessee of an orchard is exactly like the lessee of land.

He takes possession only of the underlying property, which he himself tends until the crop grows firm and the fruit begins to ripen, just as the worker does under fruit-sharing and crop-sharing arrangements. If it is permissible to describe this person as a purchaser of the fruit, then the lessee should likewise be described as a purchaser of the crop, and the worker in fruit-sharing, crop-sharing, and profit-sharing investment partnerships as a purchaser of the resulting growth.

Since this does not fall within what is termed a sale, it cannot fall within the literal scope of general wording concerning sales. Nor can it be included by analogy or through the general scope of that wording’s meaning, for the distinction between the two is abundantly clear. Classifying this lease with land leases—since the two are treated alike in fruit-sharing, crop-sharing, profit-sharing investment partnerships, endowments, and other matters in which the ruling on one applies to the other—is more appropriate than classifying it with sales, as explained above.