On 1st October the Commonhold (Amendment) Regulations 2009 will come into force. The amendments tidy up the law of commonhold associations so that they are compatible with the new law on company constitutions introduced by the Companies Act 2006 which comes...
Civil Procedure Rules – 50th update?
The next amendment to the civil procedure rules has been passed in the form of the the Civil Procedure (Amendment) Rules 2009. The change has not (yet) been noted on the Ministry of Justice's CPR website but I am anticipating that they will form part...
Quick to the Plunder
The decision of the Court of Appeal in Nationwide Building Society v Wright [2009] EWCA Civ 811 confirms that a court need not set aside a final charging order merely because the order was made at a time when the owner of the property was insolvent but had...
Defamation and anti-social behaviour
Clift v Slough Borough Council [2009] EWHC 1550 considers the extent to which a local authority has an interest or duty to pass on allegations about anti-social behaviour to its employees and contractors for the purposes of the defence of qualified to a...
Foxtons' terms unfair
In a long awaited decision the High Court has held in Office of Fair Trading v Foxtons [2009] EWHC 1691 (Ch) that some of the terms and conditions contained in Foxtons' contract with landlords were unfair. While strictly speaking this decision is unrelated...
Rent review (Megarry at last…)
Avid students of assured tenancies will know that the late Sir Robert Megarry wondered (in his work the Rent Acts) what would happen to a term providing for a mechanism for setting the rent that was written into a fixed term assured tenancy after that...
Adverse possession of the river bed
In Port of London Authority v Ashmore [2009] EWHC 954 (Ch) the Defendant had, since 1983, tethered his sailing barge to Albion Wharf on the Thames close by Battersea Bridge. The Authority wished to register title to the bed of the river Thames but Mr Ashmore...
Adverse possession of a highway
Can you acquire title to land over which a highway runs? There seems to be no reason in principle why not but R (Smith) v Land Registry (Peterborough) [2009] EWHC 328 (Admin) — wrongly in my view — suggests otherwise. The Claimant had occupied land with his...
Emergency remedial action
In Luton Borough Council v Universal Group we have the first (and almost certainly last) decision of the Lands Tribunal under the Housing Act 2004 on appeal from a Residential Property Tribunal (or RPT). 15-17 Chapel Street, Luton is (or was) consisted of a...
Disclaimer, assignment and guarantee
In Shaw v Doleman[2009] EWCA Civ 279 the Court of Appeal confirmed the view taken by some writers as to the effect of the disclaimer of an assigned lease on the obligations of a guarantor. At the same time it highlights that wording common in Authorised...
A dutiful cousin
The House of Lords have again considered the nature and extent of proprietary estoppel in Thorner v Majors [2009] UKHL 18. Regular readers will recall we discussed their decision in Yeoman’s Row Management Limited (Appellants) and another v Cobbe...
Improvements, rent and former long leaseholders – a nasty loophole
The recent case of Hughes v Borodex Ltd [2009] EWHC 565 (Admin) illustrates a pitfall that may face the very small number of former long leaseholders who have become assured tenancies as a result of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 ("the 1989 Act")....