02 October 2008
Anthony Judge discusses tenants' repair costs in the light of Watson v Jackson
As readers will remember from the judgment in Jackson v Watson [2008] EWHC 14 earlier this year, the unfortunate tenant Mr Jackson spent several thousand pounds repairing damage to his basement flat caused by leaks from some light wells located outside his demise. The parties agreed that these leaks occurred because the concrete encasing the grills connected to a downpipe outside these light wells had been laid defectively when the property was converted into flats before the date of the lease. The High Court decided that the landlord was not liable for the tenant's repair costs, first because the tenant had no contractual claim against his landlord and second because the principle of “caveat lessee” overrode any possible tortious claim of nuisance that Mr Jackson might have had against his landlord.
This article will examine these two strands of reasoning from the perspective of a commercial tenants' lawyer wishing to protect his clients as much as possible from this sort of irrecoverable
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