(Bristol Assizes) The tenant was the tenant of a scrap yard. He had paid his rent promptly, until he was sent to prison. Thereafter he failed to pay the rent; and had no access to legal advice. The landlord peaceably re-entered for non-payment of one quarter’s rent. Six months and four days after the re-entry the tenant applied for relief.
Held: The court considered the exercise of the equitable right of a court to grant relief from forfeiture. Simon P said: ‘The decision of the Court of Appeal in Lovelock v. Margo makes it plain that where a landlord re-enters peaceably and not through an action for forfeiture of the lease the jurisdiction of the court to give relief from forfeiture is not a statutory one but the old equitable one. As I understand the old equitable doctrine, the court would not give relief in respect of stale claims. Furthermore, if there were a statute of limitation applying at common law, equity followed the law and applied the statute to strictly analogous proceedings in Chancery. But there is no question in the instant case of a Limitation Act applying to the present situation; and it seems to me to be contrary to the whole spirit of equity to boggle at a matter of days, which is all that we are concerned with here, when justice indicates relief.
I think that a court of equity -. and it is such jurisdiction that I am exercising now — would look at the situation of the plaintiff to see whether in all the circumstances he acted with reasonable promptitude. Naturally it would also have to look at the situation of the defendants to see if anything has happened, particularly by way of delay on the part of the plaintiff, which would cause a greater hardship to them by the extension of the relief sought than by its denial to the plaintiff.’
Sir Jocelyn Simon P
[1968] 1 WLR 748
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – Lovelock v Margo CA 1963
The tenant wished to assign the lease. The lease contained the ‘usual covenant’ not to assign without consent, that consent not to be unreasonably withheld. The landlord had refused a request from the tenant to assign the lease because she was ‘not . .
Cited by:
Cited – Vision Golf Ltd v Weightmans (A Firm) ChD 26-Jul-2005
A lease had been forfeited. The defendant firm of solicitors had negligently failed to apply for relief. They argued that that failure had in fact caused no loss to the claimants, since they would have lost the lease anyway.
Held: The ‘but . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Updated: 15 October 2021; Ref: scu.234850
