Cases - Simmons and ors v Dresden
Record details
- Name
- Simmons and ors v Dresden
- Date
- [2004]
- Citation
- EWHC 933 (TCC)
- Legislation
- Keywords
- Commercial property - property management - dilapidations - claims
- Summary
-
This case highlighted a number of points concerning dilapidations claims:
- that even though the landlord may have excellent professional advice from expert building and valuation surveyors, the court can still decide against it, reducing the claim significantly, in this case effectively to nil;
- that the court can choose to disregard expert valuation evidence if it finds it not to be of assistance to it;
- that the parties will need to take care to adduce evidence to support their assertions, otherwise the court could disallow such claims;
- that it is for the landlord to prove that the value of the reversion had been diminished by the repair; and
- given the number of individual items frequently in dispute in addition to more substantial issues, dilapidations claims are very expensive to pursue.
Although not criticising the approach to the calculation of diminution in value adopted in Shortlands Investment Ltd v Cargill, the judge made some observations suggesting that the approach to valuation in Shortlands was not always appropriate.
It should not matter, in terms of assessing performance, whether the property needs decorating - if the covenant says one must decorate and it is not carried out, there is a breach.
In the case of the covenant to repair, unless part of the property subject to it is out of repair, the covenant has not been broken.