Stanbalt Realty Co. v. Commercial Credit Corp.

The last hope of the appellant, Stanbalt Realty Company (Stanbalt), is the so-called “last antecedent rule” for/ construing the terms of a contract, to which rule Stanbalt clings with grim tenacity. This rule of construction, never adopted in Maryland, and of only marginal significance in the scattered jurisdictions that have called upon it, is too frail a reed to carry the appellant’s burden.

Beginning in February, 1971, the appellee, Commercial Credit Corporation (Commercial Credit), leased the sixth floor of the Standard Oil Building in Baltimore City from Stanbalt’s predecessor. The first…