Cases Commercial Disputes
Judgment Date: 25 Oct 2007
The administration of justice required that there should be finality in litigation at an appropriate stage, and so an application under the CPR r.52.9(1)(c) was refused where it was made very late without a good explanation.
View case
Judgment Date: 25 Oct 2007
An obligation owed by a lessee to a potential buyer of the freehold property to surrender its leasehold interest prior to the property being sold was rendered void by the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 s.38(1).
View case
Judgment Date: 25 Jul 2007
Under the Lugano Convention Art.5(1), once there was found to exist a relevant "obligation" having contractual effect on which a party was entitled to rely and for breach of which he was entitled to claim relief in contract, the place of performance of the obligation was the place where either, if it was executory, the obligation was to be performed; if it was negative, the obligation was to be honoured; if it was a warranty to an existing condition or state of affairs, the condition or state of affairs was required by the contract to exist.
View case
Judgment Date: 19 Jul 2007
An inference of an implied agreement to form a partnership might be legitimate if the parties had not addressed in express terms what the basis of their business should be, but if they had discussed the subject expressly and had not reached agreement because one party declined the other's proposal of partnership, then such an inference would contradict the express dealings and discussions between the parties.
View case
Judgment Date: 11 Jul 2007
Particulars of claim of a barrister seeking payment of fees and damages against a client were struck out where the particulars were excessively lengthy, contained details that were irrelevant to the cause of action, contained a large number of terms that were simply incomprehensible and contained material that was subject to privilege.
View case
Judgment Date: 09 Jul 2007
A written agreement that one party would sell a property to another at a certain price had not on its face been a deed, and although the language of the agreement and the fact that it was signed and witnessed indicated that it had been intended to have legal effect those factors did not indicate that the parties had intended the agreement to have the extra status of being a deed.
View case
Judgment Date: 07 Jun 2007
On the proper construction of an agreement between a property developer and landowners, whereby the developer had agreed to use its expertise to maximise the potential of land for development in return for a fee payable upon the sale of the land once planning consent had been obtained, the landowners were prevented from selling or otherwise disposing of the land whilst the agreement remained in force.
View case
Judgment Date: 14 May 2007
The landlords of a shopping centre were granted an interim injunction, pending trial, restraining the tenants of retail premises from creating or maintaining displays in their shop front consisting of lingerie and sexual paraphernalia that might be regarded as indecent or offensive.
View case
Judgment Date: 04 May 2007
Whilst an alleged conscious and deliberate breach of fiduciary duty had occurred more than six years before proceedings were issued, the claim was not statute-barred as the Limitation Act 1980 s.32 applied to prevent time from running until the concealment could have been discovered by the claimants when acting with reasonable diligence.
View case
Judgment Date: 03 May 2007
In the circumstances, a joint venture agreement and a facility letter annexed to the agreement constituted one composite agreement. Therefore a guarantor was liable in respect of the obligations under both documents, even though the guarantee had only been contained in the joint venture agreement.
View case
Judgment Date: 24 Apr 2007
A group of companies that had provided sufficient evidence that their employees faced a serious threat of harassment from animal rights protestors was entitled to a continuation of an injunction that controlled the location, timing and frequency of the protestors' demonstrations. The companies could not enforce the injunction against unnamed protestors without first identifying those protestors and obtaining the court's permission under CPR r.19.6(4)(b).
View case
Judgment Date: 04 Apr 2007
On its proper construction, a rent review clause in a lease of a computer data centre required that the open market rent of the building was to be assessed on the assumption that the demised premises comprised high class commercial offices.
View case
Judgment Date: 03 Apr 2007
Monies claimed by parties to have been loaned by one party to the other party were not on the evidence so lent by either party so that no liability attached to either party for repayment of any of such monies.
View case
Judgment Date: 03 Apr 2007
The effect of a supplemental deed between a landlord and a partnership, as the assignee of an underlease, was to restrict the assignee's liability for rent to the partnership assets to the exclusion of the personal assets of individual partners and in the case of default to limit any recovery by the landlord against the tenant and any previous tenant in the same way. Although not a party to the deed a previous tenant could take advantage of the limitation on liability by virtue of the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 s.1(1)(b).
View case
Judgment Date: 30 Mar 2007
A mineral exhaustion certificate provided by a surveyor under a lease was invalid as the surveyor had departed from his instructions and had mistakenly considered the wrong subject matter.
View case
Judgment Date: 23 Mar 2007
A tenant was entitled to seek damages for the landlords' failure to carry out their repair and maintenance obligations despite the existence of a clause that limited the landlords' liability where the tenant failed to inform them of the need for repairs, as the landlords had waived the benefit of that clause by advising the tenant of their intention to carry out the repairs.
View case
Judgment Date: 14 Mar 2007
Adverse possession claims to land comprising a riverbed and foreshores, asserted against the purchaser of paper title to an ancient lordship, were determined as a preliminary issue, with longstanding estate owners and the Crown being treated as squatters for the purpose of the hearing. Evidence of commercial dredging supported the adverse possession claims and the Crown's intention to posses riparian lands under its ancient entitlements was not defeated by its policy of not contesting well-documented claims to such land.
View case
Judgment Date: 09 Mar 2007
In the light of the special features of the instant case, despite being identified as the "winner" the claimant would be entitled to only 75 per cent of its costs.
View case
Judgment Date: 02 Mar 2007
A leasehold valuation tribunal had been wrong to allow amounts claimed for building works to be certified by a landlord, even if the year of certification was different from the year in which they were claimed, and, consequently, service charges payable by a tenant had been incorrectly stated in the end-of-year accounts.
View case
Judgment Date: 15 Feb 2007
In the circumstances a state was not entitled to state immunity in respect of a claim to enforce a settlement agreement relating to sovereign debt but the state had a real prospect of defending the claim on the basis that certain provisions of the agreement were penal.
View case