The court was asked whether a landlord was obliged to repair a drain serving the demised premises which passed under the landlord’s retained land.
Held: No such obligation could be implied and it did not fall within the scope of the covenant for quiet enjoyment. Slade LJ said: ‘The express covenant for quiet enjoyment and implied covenant against derogation from grant cannot in our opinion be invoked so as to impose on [the plaintiffs] positive obligations to perform acts of repair which they would not otherwise be under any obligation to perform.’ and
‘The subject of the dispute, that is the landlords’ part of the green drain, is property in respect of which the tenant enjoys an easement of drainage governed by the general law of easements. It is well settled that the grant of an easement ordinarily carries with it the grant of such ancillary rights as are reasonably necessary to its exercise or enjoyment: Jones v Pritchard [1908] 1 Ch 630, 638, per Parker J. In our opinion, therefore, it is plain that the tenant would have the right, when reasonably necessary, to enter the landlord’s property for the purpose of repairing that drain and to do the necessary repairs. In contrast, however, it is an equally well settled principle of the law of easements that, apart from any special local custom or express contract, the owner of a servient tenement is not under any obligation to the owner of the dominant tenement to execute any repairs necessary to ensure the enjoyment of the easement by the dominant owner; apart from special local custom or express contract, the law will ordinarily leave the dominant owner to look after himself: see Gale on Easements, 14th ed. (1972), p47 and Holden v White [1982] QB 679,683-684 per Oliver LJ.’
Judges:
Slade LJ
Citations:
[1985] QB 688
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Southwark London Borough Council v Mills/Tanner; Baxter v Camden London Borough Council HL 21-Oct-1999
Tenants of council flats with ineffective sound insulation argued that the landlord council was in breach of the covenant for quiet enjoyment in their tenancy agreements.
Held: A landlord’s duty to allow quiet enjoyment does not extend to a . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Landlord and Tenant
Updated: 07 October 2022; Ref: scu.442750
