In Mitchell v Watkinson ([2014] EWCA Civ 1472, CA (Eng)) the English Court of Appeal had to look at the application of the English equivalent of section 12(2) of the Limitation Ordinance. Section 12(2) provides that:
‘A tenancy from year to year or other period, without a lease in writing, shall, for the purposes of this Ordinance, be deemed to be determined at the expiration of the first year or other period, and accordingly the right of action of the person entitled to the land subject to the tenancy shall be deemed to have accrued at the date of such determination:
Provided that, where any rent has subsequently been received in respect of the tenancy, the right of action shall be deemed to have accrued on the date of the last receipt of rent.’
In this case, a father, having given land to his son, purported to grant a written periodic tenancy of it to trustees who held the tenancy on trust for an unincorporated association (a cricket club). Shortly afterwards, on 2nd October 1947, the father’ solicitors wrote to one of the trustees telling him that the land had been conveyed to the son but inaccurately stating that this had happened after the date of the tenancy. The club’s last payment of rent was made on 8th October 1974. The club, relying on the equivalent of section 12(2), argued that time began to run on that date and that they had acquired title by adverse possession twelve years later.
This analysis relied on the proposition that the trustees did not hold under the terms of the original written agreement but under a later implied periodic tenancy. The club’s argument was that it did not hold the property under the terms of the written agreement with the father but by virtue of an implied periodic tenancy based on the payment and acceptance of rent to the son’s agents once it had been pointed out that he was the owner of the land. Thus, it was argued, the periodic tenancy was ‘without a lease in writing’ and section 12(2) applied. This succeeded.
The owner (the son’s widow) argued, among other things, that the original written lease created a tenancy by estoppel which was to be treated as having been assigned to the son. This argument failed. The correct view was that the tenancy by estoppel had been impliedly surrendered on the grant of the new implied tenancy by the son([37]).
The owner also contended that the result of the letter of 2nd October 1947 and the subsequent conduct was to give rise to an estoppel by convention so that the tenants were estopped from denying that they held under the terms of the written agreement granted by the father. This failed because the letter of 2nd October 1947 could not be the basis for a common assumption that the tenants held under the terms of the written agreement; the parties might equally plausibly have understood that a new implied tenancy came into being (and almost certainly gave no thought to the distinction) ([55]).
Michael Lower
