Site license prohibiting residence for one month per year — Purchase of site necessary before manufacturer agreeing to supply home — Agreement to postpone payment of full purchase price of site until house sold — Demand for payment within 14 days by vendor — Whether repudiation of contract — Whether repudiation accepted by purchaser — County Court holding that there had been actual repudiation accepted by purchaser — Court of Appeal upholding that decision
On August 7 1988 the defendants visited the plaintiff’s caravan park at Howley, Chard, Somerset, and decided that they would like to spend their retirement in a mobile home upon a site in the park. They put their house on the market and paid a non-returnable deposit of £1,000 to the plaintiffs. On September 2 the defendant selected a mobile home but the manufacturer would only sell to a caravan site owner. Therefore the defendants had to purchase a site from the plaintiffs at an agreed price of £43,377. A deposit of £10,500 was required and paid by means of a bank loan. The balance of the price was due on delivery. As the defendants had not yet sold their house, they agreed with the plaintiffs to vary their existing arrangement. The defendants made an immediate payment of £20,000 and all further payments were to be postponed for a reasonable period.
In July 1989 the purchase of the defendants’ house fell through. The plaintiff demanded immediate payment of the balance of the purchase price in a sum substantially higher than the agreed price within 14 days. He subsequently issued a writ claiming the sums due. The defendants counterclaimed. The judge found that the demand for payment was not genuine, was excessive and premature. It was repudiatory conduct which the defendants had accepted as such. He consequently awarded damages on the defendants’ counterclaim. The plaintiff appealed contending that it was the defendants who had repudiated the contract.
Held The appeal was dismissed.
1. The caravan park was not a protected site for the purposes of the Mobile Homes Act 1983. The site licence prohibited residential occupation in February of each year. The defendants consequently could not have enjoyed the security conferred by that Act. Their retirement home would have been precarious in tenure and would not have been lawfully occupiable in any February.
2. To amount to a repudiation an actual or intended breach had to go to the root of the contract: see Federal Commerce & Navigation Co Ltd v Molena Alpha Co Ltd [1979] AC 757 at p 779. The contract here was to culminate in a license to occupy on a caravan site where the judge found “relationships with the site proprietor … were very important”. In this case the proprietor made a peremptory and premature demand for payment which he knew to be excessive and which carried with it the plain implication that he would never grant a license unless the unwarranted demand was met. The judge was right to conclude that the proprietor’s conduct on July 23 1989 was repudiatory conduct.
3. The evidence was capable of supporting the judge’s conclusion that the respondents accepted the repudiation of July 23. The court attached decisive importance to the removal of furniture on July 30. It was the most eloquent act that persons with the ordinary qualities of the defendants could have performed in order to indicate their acceptance that the contractual relationship had ended.
Graham Eklund (instructed by Clarke Willmott & Clarke) appeared for the plaintiffs; Sharon Tregaskis (instructed by Lloyd Bragg, of Bristol) appeared for the defendants.
