Old meets new

• A landlord seeking to forfeit a lease must ensure that his right to do so has arisen under the terms of the lease and that he does nothing to waive that right before he can exercise it.

Almost all modern leases provide that if the tenant is in arrears of rent, or fails to perform his covenants in the lease, the landlord may re-enter and bring the lease to an end by forfeiture. But the courts have traditionally ‘leaned against’ forfeiture, viewing a landlord’s right of re-entry as simply a security for performance of the tenant’s obligations, rather than a means for the landlord to get the premises back. The best-known aspect of this approach is the court’s extensive jurisdiction to grant the tenant relief against forfeiture, on condition that he makes good his defaults. But the courts will also closely scrutinise whether the landlord is properly entitled to forfeit the lease in the first place, as two recent cases show.

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