The defendant dealer in antiques also lived in the property with his wife. He refused to leave after the expiry of the term, claiming a Rent Act tenancy. The lessors had accepted rent from the defendant undertenant who contended that thereby a new periodic tenancy had been created.
Held: All the circumstances must be looked at in order to decide whether it was proper to infer from acceptance direct that the parties had agreed to the creation of a new tenancy. In the circumstances, there was no new tenancy as the overwhelming inference was that no agreement was ever reached or indeed ever contemplated. Any common law assumption is now largely displaced where behaviour might be attributed to statutory renewal rights.
Ormrod LJ said: ‘The old common law presumption of a tenancy from the payment and acceptance of a sum in the nature of rent dies very hard. But I think the authorities make it quite clear that in these days of statutory controls over the landlord’s right of possession, this presumption is unsound and no longer holds. The question now is a purely open question; it is simply: is it right and proper to infer from all the circumstances of the case, including the payments, that the parties had reached an agreement for a tenancy? I think it does not now go any further than that.’ and ‘The question is whether the proper inference from all the circumstances is that the parties had agreed upon a new tenancy.’
Scarman LJ held that the inference to be drawn in the circumstances was that no contractual tenancy, periodic or otherwise, was agreed, but in many cases a common and reasonable inference from the acceptance of rent is the creation of a tenancy, and: ‘but of course the law remains essentially this, that one must look at all the circumstances of the case and determine what is a fair inference to be drawn . . Indeed, one would have thought that today, where tenants have in one respect or another the protection of the law for possession of premises to which they would have at common law no contractual entitlement, the courts would not be as quick to infer a new tenancy as in the old days they would have been where there was nothing to explain the presence of a defendant upon the premises or upon the land other than a trespass or a contract.’
Ormrod LJ
(1979) 251 EG 847, [1979] 2 EGLR 42
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – Lewis v MTC Cars Ltd CA 1975
Russell LJ said: ‘It is quite plain that if you find one person in occupation paying sums by way of rent quarterly or half-yearly to another person, ordinarily speaking it is a right conclusion that there is a relationship between them of . .
Cited by:
Cited – Hussein Walji, Zulikar Walji, Mohammed Iqbal Walji, Hussain Walji v Mount Cook Land Limited CA 21-Dec-2000
The claimants sought a new lease under the Act. They were assignees and sureties of an underlease of the premises, but a new underlease had been taken by a company through which the partnership had intended to trade. The partnership had paid rent in . .
Cited – Mattey Securities Limited v Ervin, Sutton, Mitchell CA 3-Apr-1998
After the insolvency of an assignee of a lease, the landlord talked with possible new tenants, and the original lessee now said that the landlord had impliedly accepted a surrender of the original lease, thus releasing him from continuing liability. . .
Cited – Bennett Properties v H and S Engineering QBD 14-Oct-1998
The parties had been landlord and tenant and the lease was to be renewed for a second time. They negotiated and ageed terms for the next lease, including particularly a new rent, but the tenant did not execute the new lease. The landlord had . .
Cited – Javad v Aqil CA 15-May-1990
P in possession – tenancy at will Until Completion
A prospective tenant was allowed into possession and then made periodic payments of rent while negotiations proceeded on the terms of a lease to be granted to him. The negotiations broke down.
Held: The tenant’s appeal failed. It was inferred . .
Cited – Sopwith v Stutchbury CA 1985
The prospective tenant moved into the dwelling-house before the terms had been finalised. The court was asked as to his status between entering and the execution of the tenancy agreement.
Held: He was a mere licensee.
Stephenson LJ said: . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Landlord and Tenant
Leading Case
Updated: 09 November 2021; Ref: scu.184137
