Cases - Jeffries v O'Neill
Record details
- Name
- Jeffries v O'Neill
- Date
- (1984)
- Citation
- 269 EG 131 or 46 P&CR 376, ChD
- Legislation
- Keywords
- Commercial property – landlord and tenant – rent review – market rent – open market basis of valuation – whether the rent review clause should be construed so as to assume that the premises were capable of being let in an open market
- Summary
-
The occupiers of an office building took a lease of additional first and second floor offices in an adjoining building, creating their own access through the party wall and with no right to use the landlord's staircase which was then removed. At the rent review under the lease of the additional offices, the tenant argued that those premises should be valued on the basis of the reality, namely that they could only be accessed from the tenant's adjoining building and therefore the tenant was the only potential bidder. The landlord successfully argued that the assumption in the rent review clause of a letting in the open market by a willing lessor to a willing lessee required the valuer to assume that the premises were capable of being let in the open market and therefore the absence of the staircase should be disregarded.