Kataria v Safeland Plc
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 04 November 1997 |
| Date | 04 November 1997 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
Court of Appeal
Before Lord Justice Schiemann and Lord Justice Brooke
Landlord and tenant - landlord not personally owed rent arrears - landlord's right to forfeit lease
A landlord who was not personally owed any arrears of his tenant's rent because he had assigned the right of recovery to his predecessor in title could nevertheless exercise a peaceable right to re-enter the premises and forfeit the lease.
The Court of Appeal so held allowing an appeal by the landlord, Safeland plc, from Judge Cotram's judgment in Westminster County Court on September 3, 1996 in which he had held that the landlord's purported forfeiture of Mr Vinod Kataria's lease of shop premises at 39 Kingsway, London, had been unlawful.
The tenant held the premises, a modest walk-in kiosk, under a lease that contained a proviso for re-entry in the event of the rent falling into arrears.
In October 1995 the present landlord had agreed to purchase the freehold of the premises, the tenant at that time owing arrears of some £10,000 but having made arrangements to clear them.
Under the terms of the sale agreement the landlord had as signed the right to recover the arrears to his predecessor in title. The agreement was completed on November 14, 1995 and on November 16 the landlord re-entered the premises thereby forfeiting the lease on the ground on non-payment of rent.
Mr Jonathon Ferris for the landlord; Mr Martyn Barklem for the tenant.
LORD JUSTICE BROOKE said that the question, never previously decided, was whether a landlord who was not personally owed any arrears of rent because he had assigned the right to recover the arrears to his predecessor, could nevertheless exercise a peaceable right to re-enter and forfeit the lease.
The judge had taken the view that on the proper construction of the lease the rent in arrears had to be owed to the particular landlord who sought to enforce the right of re-entry.
But Mr Ferris, relying on basic principles of landlord and tenant law, said that there was no such qualification in the wording of the re-entry clause and no reason why such qualification should be implied. The judge, he said, had failed to distinguish between the personal remedy to sue the tenant for the arrears, which had been assigned to the landlord's predecessor, with the proprietary remedy of forfeiture for breach of covenant which remained vested in the landlord.
Those submissions were well founded. Given that the...
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...from the land. 39 The point here is that a landlord may assign the right to receive the rent without assigning the reversion: Kataria v Safeland Plc [1998] 1 E.G.L.R. 39. Such an assignment treats the rent as a chose in action and the assignee acquires no interest in the reversion. The ass......
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