Ratio Decidendi
Where parties have entered into a specifically enforceable agreement for a lease, equity treats them as if the legal lease had already been executed. This is an application of the maxim that equity treats as done that which ought to be done. The equitable lease has the same terms as the agreed legal lease — including terms that differ from the common law periodic tenancy that would otherwise arise by implication from the tenant's occupation and payment of rent. Where there is a conflict between the legal relationship implied by conduct and the intended relationship expressed in the agreement, equity prevails, since in equity the agreed lease governs.
তথ্য
Lonsdale agreed in writing to grant Walsh a seven-year lease of a mill, with rent payable in advance. No deed was executed. Walsh went into possession and paid rent quarterly in arrear. Lonsdale demanded a year's rent in advance as per the agreement and distrained for it.
রায়ের সারসংক্ষেপ
The Court of Appeal (Jessel MR, Cotton LJ, and Lindley LJ) upheld Lonsdale's right to distrain for rent in advance. Walsh and Lonsdale had entered into a written agreement for a seven-year mill tenancy at rent payable one year in advance. Walsh took possession but no formal deed of lease was ever executed. Walsh paid rent quarterly in arrear — on the footing of a common law periodic tenancy — and resisted Lonsdale's demand for a year's advance payment. After the Judicature Act 1873, which fused the administration of law and equity, Jessel MR held the question was what was the real relationship between the parties in the eye of equity, since both courts were now administered in the same forum. Equity would specifically enforce the written agreement for a lease. Therefore, the parties stood in the position of landlord and tenant as if the legal lease had been executed on the agreed terms. Those terms included advance payment of rent. Walsh held on those terms. Lonsdale was entitled to enforce them by distress. The common law periodic tenancy that might otherwise arise from occupation and periodic rent payments was displaced by the equitable lease. The practical importance of the case was enormous: it established that an agreement for a lease, provided it was in writing and specifically enforceable, was as good as the lease itself, enabling parties to rely on agreed lease terms without waiting for formalities.
মূল উদ্ধৃতি
"There is an agreement for a lease of which specific performance would be granted. That being so, the tenant holds under the same terms in equity as if a lease had been granted, it being a case in which equity regards as done that which ought to be done."
— Jessel MR at 14
"Since the Judicature Act, there are not two estates as there were formerly — one at law and one in equity. Now, there is only one court and equity prevails."
— Jessel MR at 14
"A man who has a right to have a lease granted to him under an agreement for a lease holds under that agreement in equity upon the same terms as those of the proposed lease."
— Cotton LJ at 15
পরবর্তী ব্যবহার
Followed as the leading authority on the equitable lease principle. Now qualified by s.2 Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989, which requires contracts for the disposition of interests in land to be in writing and signed by both parties — an oral agreement for a lease cannot give rise to an equitable lease.
Applied in Re Maugham (1885) 14 QBD 956 and in numerous subsequent decisions on the status of an agreement for a lease pending formal execution of the deed.
Distinguished in cases where the agreement for a lease is not specifically enforceable — e.g. where there are insuperable obstacles to the grant or where the agreement lacks the formalities required by s.2 LP(MP)A 1989 — so that no equitable lease arises and the common law periodic tenancy governs.
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