Privity of estate between the assignee and the lessor creates liability in the lessor only in respect of covenants which run with the land.
What was plainly stated and understood by the parties to be an underlease operated as an assignment of the lease as a matter of law, because the duration of the purported underlease equalled or exceeded that of the lease. Whatever the form of the transaction, if a tenant purports to grant a sublease for a term equal to or larger than the term vested in the tenant, it necessarily results in an assignment because the tenant is left without a reversion.
Lord Greene MR said: ‘In accordance with a very old and established rule, where a lessee, by a document in the form of a sub-lease, divests himself of everything that he has got (which he must necessarily do if he is transferring to his so-called sub-lessee an estate as great as, or purporting to be greater than, his own) he from that moment is a stranger to the land, in the sense that the relationship of landlord and tenant, in respect of tenure, cannot any longer exist between him and the so called sub-lessee.’
Judges:
Lord Greene MR
Citations:
[1946] KB 306
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Berrisford v Mexfield Housing Co-Operative Ltd SC 9-Nov-2011
The tenant appealed against an order granting possession. The tenancy, being held of a mutual housing co-operative did not have security but was in a form restricting the landlord’s right to recover possession, and the tenant resisted saying that it . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Landlord and Tenant
Updated: 07 October 2022; Ref: scu.448475
