Fox v Jolly: HL 1916

The House referred to a schedule of repair served on the tenant: ‘Now the schedule is attacked on several grounds. It is said that it does not tell the tenant what it is he ought to do in order to remedy the breach of which complaint is made. I am not prepared to accede to that view of the schedule. But even if it did not, I can find nowhere in the section any words which cast upon the landlord the obligation of telling the tenant what it is that he must do. All that the landlord is bound to do is to state particulars of the breaches of covenants of which he complains and call upon the lessee to remedy them. The means by which the breach is to be remedied is a matter for the lessee and not for the lessor. In many cases specification of the breach will of itself suggest the only possible remedy. ‘ and ‘In the present case I think the notice sufficiently specified the landlord’s complaint. It gave the tenant adequate notice of what he was required to do, and it provided full and sufficient information upon which he could determine what course of action he should adopt.’ In applying Fletcher v Nokes, ‘it should be borne in mind that the notice is addressed to a person who knows, or ought to know, the nature and condition of the premises of which he is the tenant, so that a statement might be sufficient to draw his attention to the things of which the landlord complains, which might be insufficient so to do in the case of a stranger who had never seen or who knew nothing of the premises. ‘
Lord Parmoor said: ‘I think that the notice should be construed as a whole in a common-sense way, and that no lessee could have any reasonable doubt as to the particular breaches which are specified.’
Lord Buckmaster LC, Lord Parmoor
[1916] 1 AC 1
Conveyancing and Law of Property Act 1881 14
England and Wales
Citing:
Appeal fromJolly v Brown CA 1914
‘The Act of Parliament provides that a right of re-entry or forfeiture for breach of covenant in a lease shall not be enforceable unless the lessor serves on the lessee a notice specifying the particular breach complained of, and if the breach is . .
CitedFletcher v Nokes 1897
A notice was issued under s 14 of the Conveyancing and Law of Property Act 1881 in which the lessor alleged generally that the lessee had ‘broken the covenants for repairing the inside and outside’ of the demised premises, and required the lessee to . .

Cited by:
Appealed toJolly v Brown CA 1914
‘The Act of Parliament provides that a right of re-entry or forfeiture for breach of covenant in a lease shall not be enforceable unless the lessor serves on the lessee a notice specifying the particular breach complained of, and if the breach is . .
CitedAdagio Properties Limited v Ansari CA 22-Jan-1998
The requirement on a landlord to specify the breach in a s146 notice, did not require each specific detail to be given; the notice must give the tenant however opportunity to remedy the defects. The landlord had become concerned that the tenant was . .
CitedAkici v LR Butlin Ltd CA 2-Nov-2005
The tenant appealed against forfeiture of his lease for breach of a qualified covenant against assignment. It was said that the tenant had attempted to hide from the landlord the assignment of the premises to his company or its shared occupation. . .
CitedWoodchester Lease Management Services Ltd v Swayne and Co (A Firm) CA 26-Aug-1998
The parties entered into a regulated copier finance agreement. The defendant defaulted. The plaintiffs served a notice to determine the agreement, but providing what sum was to be paid to continue. The defendant said that the notice specified the . .
CitedJohn Lewis Properties PLC v Viscount Chelsea ChD 1993
Three Leases of the Peter Jones site to T’s predecessor in 1934 contained covenants by T to redevelop the site in two phases, the second of which related to the MackMurdo and Simon’s Street buildings and was to be completed by December 25 1987. In . .

Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Updated: 28 July 2021; Ref: scu.185097