Cases - Finchbourne v Rodrigues

Record details

Name

Finchbourne v Rodrigues

Date

[1976]

Citation

3 All ER 581, CA

Keywords

Landlord and tenant – service charge – amount of service charge ascertained and certified by lessors’ managing agents ‘acting as experts and not as arbitrators’ – valid certificate – condition precedent – implied terms - whether the lessor could be the managing agents – whether there was a valid certificate – whether a term should be implied into the lease that the costs should be ‘fair and reasonable’

Summary

The amount of the tenant's contribution was to be 'ascertained and certified by the lessors' managing agents acting as experts and not as arbitrators'. The issue of a valid certificate was held to be a condition precedent to the recovery of the service charge. The lessors were subsequently discovered to be the managing agents themselves. The agents' certificate was held to be invalid and 'managing agents must, according to the terms of the lease, be somebody different from the lessors'.

The tenant also successfully argued that the landlord would only be entitled to recover costs that were fair and reasonable. It was held that the parties to the lease could not have intended the landlord to have absolute discretion to accept the highest conceivable sums for maintenance and recover the cost incurred. Therefore, in order to give business efficacy to the lease, a term was to be implied into the lease that the costs recovered should be 'fair and reasonable'.