A provision in the lease obliged a tenant to carry out repairs and provided that if he did not do so, the landlord might do the repairs and recover from the tenant the costs and expenses of doing so.
Held: The provision was not a penalty. The money was payable not upon the breach but because the landlord decided to do the repairs himself and upon him doing them, notwithstanding that the tenant’s breach was, of course, necessarily a part of the sequence of events whereby the money came to be payable. A landlord’s claim for rent is a claim in debt and the rule requiring an injured party to mitigate his losses does not apply to a claim in debt.
Millett LJ, Otton LJ
Ind Summary 04-Dec-1995, Gazette 24-Jan-1996, Times 14-Nov-1995, [1996] Ch 195, [1995] EWCA Civ 9, [1996] 2 WLR 220, [1996] 1 All ER 303, [1996] 1 EGLR 78, [1996] 10 EG 159
Bailii
Leasehold Property (Repairs) Act 1938 1
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Broadway Investments Hackney Ltd v Grant CA 20-Dec-2006
The respondent had taken a tenancy of premises from the local authority. The ground floor was for use as a shop, and the first was residential. He had previously taken a licence and had refurbished the premises. The authority sold the freehold to . .
Cited – Office of Fair Trading v Abbey National Plc and others ComC 8-Oct-2008
The director sought a further judgment as to whether charges imposed by banks on a customer taking an unauthorised overdraft, and otherwise were unlawful penalties. . .
Cited – Scottish and Newcastle Plc v Raguz ChD 11-Apr-2006
The defendant had taken assignments of the term of two underleases from the claimant, and then re-assigned them to a limited company with guarantors of the rent, and they in turn re-assigned the leases. The last company became insolvent. The . .
Cited – Reichman and Another v Beveridge CA 13-Dec-2006
The defendants were tenants of the claimant. They vacated the premises and stopped paying the rent. The claimant sought payment of the arrears of rent. The defendants said that the claimants should have taken steps to reduce their damages by seeking . .
Cited – Agricullo Ltd v Yorkshire Housing Ltd CA 16-Mar-2010
The landlord sought leave to appeal against a refusal to award it costs associated with the service of a section 146 notice on the tenant. The tenant had covenanted to repair, and to indemnify the landlord against expenses of such notices. The . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Landlord and Tenant, Contract, Damages
Leading Case
Updated: 02 November 2021; Ref: scu.82521
