20. Regulating Leases and Protecting Occupiers

Land Law ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben McFarlane ◽  
Nicholas Hopkins ◽  
Sarah Nield

All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter reviews the statutory protection potentially available to B if he or she has a lease. It is shown that, in some cases, B can be seen as having a lease (at least, in the sense used by a particular statute) even if B has no property right. A lease can give B status: the status of a party qualifying for statutory protection. As the Law Commission has noted, however, it is questionable whether the availability of such protection should continue to turn on whether B has a lease rather than a licence, and a new approach has been taken in recent reforms introduced in Wales.

2021 ◽  
pp. 754-777
Author(s):  
Ben McFarlane ◽  
Nicholas Hopkins ◽  
Sarah Nield

All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter reviews the statutory protection potentially available to B if he or she has a lease. It is shown that, in some cases, B can be seen as having a lease (at least, in the sense used by a particular statute) even if B has no property right. A lease can give B status: the status of a party qualifying for statutory protection. As the Law Commission has noted, however, it is questionable whether the availability of such protection should continue to turn on whether B has a lease, rather than a licence, and a new approach has recently been taken in Wales.


Author(s):  
Ben McFarlane ◽  
Nicholas Hopkins ◽  
Sarah Nield

All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter reviews the statutory protection potentially available to B if he or she has a lease. It is shown that, in some cases, B can be seen as having a lease (at least, in the sense used by a particular statute) even if B has no property right. A lease can give B status: the status of a party qualifying for statutory protection. As the Law Commission has noted, however, it is questionable whether the availability of such protection should continue to turn on whether B has a lease rather than a licence.


Author(s):  
Ben McFarlane ◽  
Nicholas Hopkins ◽  
Sarah Nield

All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter assesses the impact of the Land Registration Act 2002 (LRA 2002). The Act principally affects the acquisition and defences questions. It considers whether the Act has achieved its aim of providing a comprehensive and accurate register, and also examines if such an aim is a worthwhile one. The effect of the Act depends on whether C's registration can be said to be a ‘mistake’; but that term is not defined in the Act, and so there is room for disagreement amongst judges and commentators as to how the crucial notion of ‘mistake’ should be interpreted. The Act also concentrates on the different question of whether B can assert a pre-existing legal or equitable property right against C. The Law Commission heralded the reforms made by the LRA 2002 as a ‘conveyancing revolution’. At the same time, further changes to conveyancing practice are warranted in order to tackle the perennial frustration experienced by potential homebuyers.


Land Law ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben McFarlane ◽  
Nicholas Hopkins ◽  
Sarah Nield

All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter assesses the impact of the Land Registration Act 2002 (LRA 2002) and looks at recent Law Commission proposals to reform the LRA 2002. The Act principally affects the acquisition and defences questions. It considers whether the Act has achieved its aim of providing a comprehensive and accurate register, and also examines if such an aim is a worthwhile one. The effect of the Act depends on whether C’s registration can be said to be a ‘mistake’; but that term is not defined in the Act, and so there is room for disagreement amongst judges and commentators as to how the crucial notion of ‘mistake’ should be interpreted. The Act also concentrates on the different question of whether B can assert a pre-existing legal or equitable property right against C. The chapter considers the detail of some of the Law Commission’s recent proposals to update the LRA 2002, and notes how those proposals are based on a more nuanced approach, which balances the need of a registered party against other policy concerns.


2021 ◽  
pp. 697-753
Author(s):  
Ben McFarlane ◽  
Nicholas Hopkins ◽  
Sarah Nield

All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter focuses on a key feature of a lease: its ability to count as a property right. It explores the three principal questions that apply to any property right: the content question, the acquisition question, and the defences question. It evaluates how the judges’ approach to defining the content of a lease as a property right may have been affected by the presence of statutory protection. The courts’ approach to the content of a lease may be shaped by the fact that, if B has such a right, he or she may qualify (or have qualified) for significant statutory protection. It also considers the impact of the requirement that a lease must have a certain term. The chapter also considers the debate as to the contractual or proprietary nature of the lease.


Author(s):  
Andrew Burrows

Punitive or exemplary damages are damages whose purpose is to punish the defendant for his or her wrongful conduct. In Broome v Cassell Lord Hailsham said that he preferred the term ‘exemplary damages’ to ‘punitive damages’ as better expressing the policy of the law. English courts have subsequently followed Lord Hailsham’s preference. But in its Report on this area in 1997, the Law Commission recommended that the pre-Broome v Cassell terminology of ‘punitive damages’ was clearer and more straightforward and did not accept that this label deflected attention from the deterrence and disapproval aims of such damages. As the Law Commission said, ‘When one uses the term “punishment” in the criminal law, one does not thereby indicate that deterrence is not an important aim.’ Although nothing of substantive importance should turn on which label is adopted, the Law Commission’s approach is persuasive and the term ‘punitive damages’ is therefore preferred in this chapter and book.


2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 209-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerstin Mechlem

AbstractThe article discusses the development of international groundwater law from the first codification efforts of modern water law until present and raises relevant issues for the way forward. It first traces international groundwater law from the 1960s until the end of the last century. It then reviews the growing attention groundwater has received during the last decade and third discusses the status quo. It places particular emphasis on the 2008 Draft Articles on the Law of Transboundary Aquifers adopted by the International Law Commission and the legal arrangements made for five of the 273 transboundary aquifers. It concludes with thoughts on the way forward in this important and understudied area of international law.


2018 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-137
Author(s):  
Cath Crosby

There has been much academic debate concerning criminal liability for omissions and the extent to which such liability should be extended. The focus here concerns a recent, unreported, conviction for gross negligence manslaughter which raises the question of how far the courts and the Crown Prosecution Service are willing to blur existing boundaries of omissions liability and the established principles of causation. By scrutinising the current legal duties to act required for such liability to arise in the context of R v Bowditch, it will be demonstrated that we are moving incrementally towards a Good Samaritan law but with an absence of fair warning to guide citizens. Further, it is apparent from this conviction that the restricted principles of causation that apply to actions are not as restrictive when applied to omissions. It is clearly timely for the Law Commission to act to determine appropriate boundaries so that omissions liability complies with the rule of law.


Land Law ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben McFarlane ◽  
Nicholas Hopkins ◽  
Sarah Nield

All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource.This chapter describes the formality requirements that must be complied with for the creation or transfer of legal estates and interests in land. The three stages of creating and transferring legal rights are contract, creation or transfer, and registration. The Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989 increased the formality requirements for contracts and made more severe the consequences of non-compliance. Under s 2 of the 1989 Act, a contract may take the form of a single document signed by both parties or an exchange of documents, each of which has been signed by one of the parties. Non-compliance results in a document being void as a contract for sale of land, but a valid contract may be obtained through use of collateral contracts or rectification. The Law Commission had envisaged the use of estoppel in appropriate cases in which formality requirements for a contract for sale were not complied with. The fundamental objective of the Land Registration Act 2002 (LRA 2002) is directly associated with the introduction of e-conveyancing. The goal of attaining e-conveyancing has not been deserted, but its introduction appears just as far away now as it did when the LRA 2002 passed into law.


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