The plaintiff had let a furnished house to the defendant for a year. Fom the outset the plaintiff was under a statutory obligation to paint the outside of the house during that year. In default, the statutory authority was empowered to do the work. The plaintiff had forgotten that the year of the lease was the year of the painting. She did the painting and the defendant and her family had to leave the house for about a fortnight. The defendant trenant obtained judgment for damages on her counterclaim for breach of an implied covenant of quiet enjoyment.
Held: A landlord may be in breach of covenant notwithstanding that he has acted in performance of a statutory obligation. The landlord might have protected herself by a covenant for the purpose in the lease. A covenant for quiet enjoyment is implied in favour of the lessee but a covenant for good title (or good right to confer possession) is not. Lord Alverstone, the Chief Justice, explained the nature of a landlord’s implied covenant for quiet enjoyment: ‘Apart from authority it would certainly seem, on principle and in common sense, that when one person agrees to give possession of his house for a time to another, that ought to carry with it an agreement that he, the landlord, and those claiming through him, will not dispossess the tenant during that time. Therefore, unless there is some special meaning attached to the word ‘demise’, the good sense of the thing would seem to be that, upon an agreement to let, a covenant or contract was to be implied that the landlord and those claiming under him would not disturb the possession of the tenant. Unless driven to do so by authority, I should hesitate a long time before drawing any distinction in that respect between the words ‘agree to let’ and ‘demise”.
Judges:
Lord Alverstone CJ
Citations:
[1902] 2 KB 351
Cited by:
Cited – Kenny v Preen 15-Oct-1962
A landlord’s threats to evict the tenant, accompanied by repeated shouting and knocking on her door, was held to be a breach of his covenant for quiet enjoyment. The court explained that ‘the word ‘enjoy’ used in this connection is a translation of . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Landlord and Tenant
Updated: 06 May 2022; Ref: scu.442747