header-logo header-logo

Home Login E-newsletter About us

Back on the buses

© Copyright LexisNexis 2025. All Rights Reserved.
08 January 2016 / Julia Petrenko , Jamie Sutherland
Issue: 7681 / Categories: Features , Property
printer mail-detail
nlj_7681_sutherland_0

The officious bystander rides (the Clapham omnibus) again: Jamie Sutherland & Julia Petrenko on implied terms after Marks and Spencer v Paribas

The recent Supreme Court decision in Marks and Spencer plc v BNP Paribas Securities Services Trust Company (Jersey) Limited and Another [2015] UKSC 72, [2015] All ER (D) 24 (Dec) dealt with that perennial source of contentious work for the landlord and tenant specialist, a tenant’s break clause in a commercial lease. However, the decision was of wide-reaching interest for its treatment of the law of implied terms: the Supreme Court were divided as to the continuing authority of Lord Hoffmann’s analysis of implied terms in Attorney General of Belize and Others v Belize Telecom Limited [2009] UKPC 10, [2009] 2 All ER 1127; and the result has been to confirm that implying a term is as difficult now as it ever was.

The decision in Marks and Spencer

Marks and Spencer concerned four commercial leases, effectively in identical form. Each lease provided for rent to be payable quarterly in advance on

If you are not a subscriber, subscribe now to read this content
If you are already a subscriber sign in
...or Register for two weeks' free access to subscriber content

MOVERS & SHAKERS

Read All
Sponsored by
Charles Russell Speechlys—Matthew Griffin

Charles Russell Speechlys—Matthew Griffin

Firm strengthens international funds capability with senior hire

Gilson Gray—Jeremy Davy

Gilson Gray—Jeremy Davy

Partner appointed as head of residential conveyancing for England

DR Solicitors—Paul Edels

DR Solicitors—Paul Edels

Specialist firm enhances corporate healthcare practice with partner appointment

NEWS
Read All
NLJ this week: Motor finance faces £11bn reckoning
The proposed £11bn redress scheme following the Supreme Court’s motor finance rulings is analysed in this week’s NLJ by Fred Philpott of Gough Square Chambers
NLJ this week: Gold on Awaab’s Law & digital divorce
In this week's issue, Stephen Gold, NLJ columnist and former district judge, surveys another eclectic fortnight in procedure. With humour and humanity, he reminds readers that beneath the procedural dust, the law still changes lives
NLJ this week: AI in the dock—courts need literacy, not fear
Generative AI isn’t the villain of the courtroom—it’s the misunderstanding of it that’s dangerous, argues Dr Alan Ma of Birmingham City University and the Birmingham Law Society in this week's NLJ
NLJ this week: Landlords lose their upward climb
James Naylor of Naylor Solicitors dissects the government’s plan to outlaw upward-only rent review (UORR) clauses in new commercial leases under Schedule 31 of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, in this week's NLJ. The reform, he explains, marks a seismic shift in landlord-tenant power dynamics: rents will no longer rise inexorably, and tenants gain statutory caps and procedural rights
NLJ this week: Privy Council undresses the ‘shareholder rule’
Writing in NLJ this week, James Harrison and Jenna Coad of Penningtons Manches Cooper chart the Privy Council’s demolition of the long-standing ‘shareholder rule’ in Jardine Strategic v Oasis Investments
Copyright © 2025 LexisNexis
back-to-top-scroll