Cases - Townsends Carriers Ltd v Pfizer Ltd

Record details

Name

Townsends Carriers Ltd v Pfizer Ltd

Date

[1977]

Citation

33 P & CR 361

Keywords

Estate agency

Summary

The plaintiff and defendant companies were, respectively, landlord and tenant of premises by virtue of a 7-year lease granted in 1970. Soon after the lease was granted, the premises were used and operated by Unicliffe Ltd, an associate company of the tenant. By 1974, all rent demands were made to Unicliffe. By this time Wilkinson Transport Ltd, an associate company of the landlord company, had come on the scene. Thereafter, all rent demands and correspondence were sent to Unicliffe by Wilkinson Transport. So, both landlord and tenant stood by and allowed matters to be dealt with entirely through associated companies, and those companies acted as if they were landlord and tenant. In 1975, Unicliffe gave notice to Wilkinson Transport exercising an option to determine. The plaintiff landlord claimed that the notice was void as it was not given by the tenant, nor was it served on the landlord. Nor did it purport to be served by or on agents, but treated the agents as the parties to the lease.

In giving judgment, Vice-Chancellor Megarry held that where a landlord and tenant have, expressly or by implication, each respectively consigned the whole conduct and management of the reversion and the tenancy to agents, then in general what is done in relation to the tenancy as between the landlord's agent and the tenant's agent, will be as validly done as if it had been done between the landlord and the tenant themselves. Furthermore, it is settled law that a landlord's notice to quit may be perfectly valid even if it is given by the agent in their own name as if they were the landlord and does not disclose any agency or purport to be given as agent for the landlord. There was no reason why this principle did not apply to receiving as well as to giving notices. Therefore the notice was valid.