Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, Part II — Appeal from decision of Judge Martin QC — Validity of notices served on tenant under section 25 of Act — Whether if notices were invalid tenant had waived any objection to them — Notices were on a printed form corresponding to Form 7 in the appendix to the Landlord and Tenant (Notices) Regulations 1957 as amended — The notices did not mention the name of the then landlords but implied that the landlord was one Alfred Danzig, as the notices were signed by a firm of solicitors described as ‘Solicitors and Agents for Alfred Danzig’ — Alfred Danzig had at no time been the landlord, but was the controlling shareholder in the company which was the landlord at the date of the notices — The county court judge held that the notices were valid, finding that Danzig had express or implied authority from the landlords to serve them; if wrong on this point the judge held that the tenant had waived any objection to the validity of the notices — Held by the Court of Appeal that the judge was in error on both points — The notices were statutory, not common law, notices and the relevant regulations required the name and address of the landlord to be stated on the prescribed form — This information was material and not only was it omitted but there was a misleading implication in the description of the solicitors as agents for Danzig — This defect was not cured by the fact, if it was a fact, that Danzig was authorised to act on behalf of the landlords — Hence the notices were invalid, a view supported by consideration of a number of authorities — As regards the issue of waiver, there was nothing to indicate to the tenant that the notices contained an erroneous statement or to cause her to make further inquiries until a letter was received from solicitors acting for the new landlord, whereupon the tenant took the invalidity point with reasonable promptness — Appeal allowed
The following cases are referred to in this report.
Barclays Bank Ltd v Ascott [1961] 1 WLR 717; [1961] 1 All ER 782
Bolton’s (House Furnishers) Ltd v Oppenheim [1959] 1 WLR 913; [1959] 3 All ER 90, CA
Harmond Properties Ltd v Gajdzis [1968] 1 WLR 1858; [1968] 3 All ER 263, CA
Piper v Muggleton [1956] 2 QB 569; [1956] 2 WLR 1093; [1956] 2 All ER 249, CA
Tegerdine v Brooks (1977) 36 P&CR 261; [1978] EGD 49; 245 EG 51, [1978] 1 EGLR 33, CA
Tennant v London County Council (1957) 121 JP 428; 55 LGR 421; 169 EG 689, CA
This was an appeal by the tenant, Dr Carol Stuart Morrow, the applicant in the 1954 Act proceedings in the county court, from the decision of Judge Martin QC, in the Bloomsbury County Court, in favour of the respondent landlord, Mahmud Nadeem. The premises were professional consulting rooms at 59 Wimpole Street, London W1.
Gavin Lightman QC and I D Iwi (instructed by G Lebor & Co) appeared on behalf of the appellant; R W Kirk (instructed by Maurice Nadeem & Co) represented the respondent.
Giving the first judgment at the invitation of Slade LJ, NICHOLLS LJ said: This is an appeal from a decision of His Honour Judge Martin QC, sitting in the Bloomsbury County Court, on February 14 1986. The matter in contention is the validity of two notices served under section 25 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 on the appellant, Dr Carol Morrow, who is the applicant in the present proceedings.
The facts lie in a very small compass. By an agreement dated May 14 1980 a company called G D Investments Ltd demised to Dr Morrow accommodation in 59 Wimpole Street, London W1, for use by her as professional consulting rooms. The property demised comprised, first, a front room and a middle room situate on the ground floor of 59 Wimpole Street, for a term of three years from September 29 1979, and, second, a small room on the second floor at the same address for a term of three years from February 1 1980. I need not refer to any of the other provisions in the agreement. It is not in dispute that Part II of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 applied to that tenancy (or those tenancies, whichever may be the correct legal description).
On June 16 1982, or shortly thereafter, a firm of solicitors, Philip Ross & Co, served on Dr Morrow two notices. Both were on a standard printed form corresponding to Form 7 in the schedule to the Landlord and Tenant (Notices) Regulations 1957 as amended. Under those regulations at that time this form, or one substantially to the like effect, was required to be used for a landlord’s notice to terminate a business tenancy under section 25 (see section 66(1) of the 1954 Act and regulation 4).
The need for such a notice to be in a particular form stems from section 25 itself, subsection (1) providing:
The landlord may terminate a tenancy to which this Part of this Act applies by a notice given to the tenant in the prescribed form specifying the date at which the tenancy is to come to an end.
The notice given with regard to the two ground-floor rooms reads:
To Dr Carol Morrow of 59 Wimpole Street, London W1, tenant of premises known as Front and Middle Rooms on the Ground Floor of 59 Wimpole Street, London, W1.
1. We, Philip Ross & Co, of 77 Wimpole Street, London W1A 3BQ, Solicitors and Agents for your landlord (Note 7) of the above-mentioned premises, hereby give you notice terminating your tenancy on the 25th day of December 1982 (Note 1).
2. You are required within two months after the giving of this notice to notify me in writing whether or not you will be willing to give up possession of the premises on that date (Note 2).
3. The Landlord would not oppose an application to the court (Note 3) under Part II of the Act for the grant of a new tenancy (Note 6).
4. This notice is given under the provisions of section 25 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. Your attention is called to the Notes overleaf. Dated this 16th day of June 1982 Signed (Philip Ross & Co).
Then the printed reference to ‘landlord’ was struck out.
‘Address . . . 77 Wimpole Street, London W1A 3BQ.
To the left of the signature appeared the rubric: ‘Solicitors and Agents for Alfred Danzig’.
The material part of Note 7, appearing overleaf, reads:
The term ‘landlord’ in this Notice does not necessarily mean the landlord to whom the rent is paid: it means the person who is the landlord for the purposes of Part II of the Act.
Note 2 provides:
Part II of the Act enables the tenant, on being served with a notice in this form, to apply to the court for an order for the grant of a new tenancy. Such an application, however, will not be entertained unless the tenant has within 2 months after the giving of the notice terminating the tenancy notified the landlord in writing that he will not be willing to give up possession of the premises on the date specified in the notice. The application must be made not less than 2 or more than 4 months after the giving of the notice.
Note 6 states:
If the landlord states in this notice that he will not oppose an application to the court for the grant of a new tenancy, it will be open to the tenant and the landlord to negotiate on the terms of the tenancy. . . .
and contains some consequential comments on that which I need not read.
The notice relating to the small room on the second floor was to the same effect as the notice I have read, save that it referred to that room as the property demised and February 1 1983 as the date of termination of the tenancy. It will be observed that nowhere in either notice was there any mention of G D Investments Ltd.
On July 7 1982 solicitors acting for Dr Morrow gave counternotices on her behalf that she was unwilling to give up possession on the dates specified. The notices were addressed to Philip Ross & Co, who were described, following the form used by them in their section 25 notices, as ‘Solicitors and Agents for Alfred Danzig’. Subsequently, on October 6 1982, Dr Morrow commenced the present two sets of proceedings in the county court, applying in the normal way for the grant to her of new tenancies, in the one case of the ground-floor accommodation and in the other case of the small|page:74| room on the second floor. The applications contained the usual particulars, including a reference to the tenancy agreement of May 14 1980 made between G D Investments Ltd and Dr Morrow. The respondent to each application was Alfred Danzig, and his address was given as ‘c/o Messrs Philip Ross & Co.’ and their address was then stated.
Three years later, on November 11 1985, solicitors acting for Mr Mahmud Nadeem issued a summons for an order in each set of proceedings substituting himself as the respondent on the ground that he ‘is now the landlord of [Dr Morrow] within the meaning of section 44 of the said Act in respect of both the said actions as successor in title to the above-mentioned Alfred Danzig and G D Investments Ltd respectively.’ An order substituting Mr Nadeem was made on November 20 1985, and hence Mr Nadeem is now the respondent in the proceedings and the respondent to this appeal.
On December 9 1985 Dr Morrow’s two applications were amended by her to add the following paragraph as the primary relief sought, namely, ‘an Order that a Notice dated 16th June 1982 purporting to determine my tenancy of the above property was invalid.’ An order for the grant of new tenancies then became relief sought in the alternative.
The circumstance in which that amendment came to be made was that on November 12 1985 a firm of solicitors, Maurice Nadeem & Co, wrote to Dr Morrow’s solicitors a letter which included the following passage:
Since Mr Nadeem has now become by purchase the immediate landlord of Dr Morrow, you will know that he is required by the rules to be a party to the proceedings. He became landlord as successor in title to G D Investments Ltd, but has no knowledge of Mr Danzig, the respondent. Nevertheless, since you have served a counternotice to the notice apparently served by Mr Danzig, and made applications under section 25 which name him as respondent, we take it that there is no question but that you accept that he was the competent landlord at the time the counternotice and application were issued by you on Dr Morrow’s behalf. Please be good enough to inform us immediately if this is not the case.
On receiving that letter Dr Morrow’s solicitors consulted counsel, and shortly thereafter the applications were amended.
The only further facts I need mention at this stage are that it was on September 10 1985 that Mr Nadeem became landlord in succession to G D Investments Ltd. Prior to that, Dr Morrow’s landlord for the purposes of the Act was at all times G D Investments Ltd. Mr Danzig never was the landlord at any material time. His involvement was that he was the controlling shareholder and the sole director of G D Investments Ltd. Of the 1,000 shares issued by the company, 999 were held by him, and the remaining one was held jointly by him and his wife.
As I have indicated, the matter in contention now is the primary relief sought in the two sets of proceedings. On February 14 1986 the learned judge heard this issue as a preliminary point. At that hearing there was no oral evidence adduced. Having heard argument, he rejected Dr Morrow’s contention that the notices were invalid.
After setting out the rival submissions made to him, Judge Martin expressed his conclusion succinctly in these terms:
I find, and I think it is inescapable, that Alfred Danzig was authorised to act on behalf of G D Investments Ltd as its general agent, indeed G D Investments Ltd was Alfred Danzig in all but name.
I hold that he had express or at least implied authority to serve notices with his name on them and not that of his company.
I hold that the proceedings thereafter were properly constituted and that the company would have been bound by the proceedings.
Mr Nadeem has become the landlord in succession to Mr Danzig. In these circumstances, the tenant has in no way been prejudiced or misled.
He also decided that, if he were wrong on this and if it were necessary so to decide, Dr Morrow had waived any objection she might have had to the validity of the notices. The landlord, G D Investments Ltd, whom she knew was the landlord named in the lease, was not ‘on the notices’ and there was ample material that there might be a case for investigation, but no inquiries or investigation had been made, and objection was not taken to the validity of the notices until December 1985. I add, however, that the judge accepted that there was no evidence that Dr Morrow knew who Mr Danzig was prior to receipt of the letter from Mr Nadeem’s solicitors in November 1985.
I come, first, to the question of the validity of the notices. It is to be observed at once that the question is not one concerning the validity of a common law notice to quit or the essential ingredients of such a notice. We were referred to the decision of this court in Harmond Properties Ltd v Gajdzis [1968] 3 All ER 263 as authority for a proposition to the effect that a common law notice to quit is valid if it is given by a duly authorised general agent, even though the name of the person on whose behalf the notice is given is not named. The question arising on this appeal is a different one: it is whether the form prescribed under the 1954 Act requires the name of the landlord to be stated. In my view it does. The question falls to be answered according to the proper construction of the statutory provisions including the prescribed form. Form 7 starts by leaving a blank for the name and address of the person to whom the notice is addressed as tenant of premises which are then to be identified. Immediately below that the format of the opening paragraph, para 1, is such as to show that what is envisaged is that the name and address of the relevant landlord will be inserted. Para 1 of the prescribed form reads: ‘I, . . . of . . ., landlord of the above-mentioned premises . . .’. That form predicates that the blank spaces preceding the phrase ‘landlord of the above-mentioned premises’ will be duly completed with the name and address of the person who is correctly so described.
This impression is confirmed by a reading of the notice as a whole in conjunction with the notes which are required to accompany the form. When the notice is so read, it is apparent that what is contemplated is that by the form the tenant will be given the information sufficient to enable him, if he so wishes, to avail himself of his statutory rights by serving the requisite counternotice on the landlord within two months and thereafter applying to the court for a new tenancy between two and four months after service of the section 25 notice. To such an application the relevant landlord would be a necessary party (see Piper v Muggleton [1956] 2 QB 569). The information needed by the tenant for those purposes will include information as to the identity of the landlord for the purposes of Part II of the 1954 Act, who may not be the same person as the person who granted the tenancy to the tenant, or the person to whom the tenant pays his rent (see section 44 of the Act). In line with this, para 2, which reads in part: ‘You are required within two months after the giving of this notice to notify me in writing whether or not you will be willing to give up possession’, is a reflection of section 25(5). Section 25(5) provides:
A notice under this section shall not have effect unless it requires the tenant, within two months after the giving of the notice, to notify the landlord in writing whether or not, at the date of termination, the tenant will be willing to give up possession of the property comprised in the tenancy.
‘Me’ in para 2 contemplates that the landlord will have been named in para 1 of the notice.
In this case the notices did not include the name or address of the competent landlord. What is more, the notices misstated the name of the landlord, in that the natural implication to be drawn from the language used in these notices was that the landlord was Alfred Danzig, for whom Philip Ross & Co were expressed to be acting as solicitors and agents. Accordingly, in my judgment, these notices did not comply with the statutory requirements.
The conclusion I have reached on this question is in accord with the authorities to which we were referred. We were referred to the decision of Barry J in Barclays Bank Ltd v Ascott [1961] 1 WLR 717. There the landlords had stated in their notice of termination that they would not oppose the grant of a tenancy if the tenant could find a guarantor, but they did not state expressly whether they were otherwise opposing the grant of a new tenancy and did not indicate, as required, if opposing, on what ground under section 30 of the Act they were opposing. At p 722 Barry J said:
A number of very useful authorities have been cited to me, but as I see it, none of them are directly in point, and I do not think any useful purpose would be served if I referred to them in detail. It appears to me that the real gist of these decisions was summarised by Hodson LJ in Bolton’s (House Furnishers) Ltd v Oppenheim [1959] 1 WLR 913. As I understand Hodson LJ’s judgment, the question which the court really has to consider is whether the statement or notice given by the landlord has given the proper information to the tenant which will enable the tenant to deal in a proper way with the situation, whatever it may be, referred to in the statement of notice. It is clear from the authorities which have been cited to me that the construction of this notice should be a liberal one, and provided that the notice gives the real substance of the information required, then the mere omission of certain details or the failure to embody in the notice the full provisions of the section of the Act referred to will not in fact invalidate the notice. However, no authority has been cited to me which indicates, or which would even tend to indicate, that a notice should be construed [otherwise than] in accordance with the ordinary rules of construction or that the court would be entitled to give to it a meaning|page:75| which it does not in fact bear under the ordinary rules of grammar or construction.
The validity of a section 25 notice came before this court in Tegerdine v Brooks (1977) 36 P & CR 261. In that case some of the prescribed notes had been omitted from the section 25 notice, but on the particular facts of that case the omitted notes were immaterial. The court decided that in those circumstances the notice given was valid as one substantially to the like effect as the form set out by the regulations; but (and this is the relevance of this decision for the present purposes) all three members of the court, namely, Cairns, Roskill and Bridge LJJ, expressly adopted the statement of Barry J as correct. With that I contrast the present case, where the notices did not give the real substance of the information required by the tenant; indeed, they misstated a relevant and important piece of that information.
There might perhaps be an exceptional case in which, notwithstanding the inadvertent misstatement or omission of the name of the landlord, any reasonable tenant would have known that that was a mistake and known clearly what was intended. But that is not this case. Accordingly, whether in such a case the notice would be valid or not is not a matter arising, and I do not pause to consider what the legal position would be in such a case. Indeed in this case the learned judge concluded that Dr Morrow had not been prejudiced or misled. But through her advisers she served counternotices addressed to Mr Danzig and commenced proceedings against Mr Danzig, and there is no reason to doubt that those steps were taken with regard to Mr Danzig in good faith. Accordingly, I do not think that, with all respect to the learned judge, there was material on which he could conclude that the tenant had in fact in no way been misled in this case.
Moreover, the fact, assuming it is such (as seems very unlikely), that Mr Danzig was authorised to act on behalf of G D Investments Ltd is nothing to the point. The fact that notice was served with the authority of the landlord does not cure the defect in the form of the notices served or enable the landlord to escape from the consequences which would otherwise flow from the notice not being in due form.
For Mr Nadeem it was submitted that, since Mr Danzig was the company in all but name and that he had authority to serve the notice, that was sufficient to comply with the statutory requirements, and reliance was placed on the decision of this court in Tennant v London County Council (1957) 121 JP 428. That case concerned the adequacy of the signature of a section 25 notice. At p 438 Jenkins LJ said this, referring to the Act of 1954:
In that Act the only provision as to signature of the landlord’s notice to terminate the tenancy consists of the words in section 25(1), that the notice is to be ‘in the prescribed form’, coupled with the occurrence of the word ‘landlord’ alongside the space for signature in the prescribed form itself. There is no imperative requirement in the body of the Act or anywhere else that the notice shall be signed by the landlord. The nearest to it is simply a space in the prescribed form designed for signature by somebody designated as the landlord. On the authorities to which I have referred, I cannot think that these few words to be collected from section 25 and from the prescribed form can be sufficient to oust the common law rule. I therefore conclude that a landlord’s notice to terminate a tenancy under section 25(1) is a good notice if it is signed by the landlord personally or by his duly authorised agent or if the landlord’s name is affixed to the notice by someone writing the landlord’s signature for him with due authority per procurationem.
In that case the landlord, the London County Council, was named in the section 25 notice as the landlord. The common law rule to which Jenkins LJ was referring was expressed by him as follows at p 438:
The principle to be deduced from these cases, other than London County Council v Agricultural Food Products which was concerned with a contractual provision, seems to me to be this, that prima facie when there is a provision in a statute requiring a document to be signed, with nothing in the subject-matter or context of the legislation to indicate that personal signature is necessary, then the common law rule prevails and a signature duly authorised by a person affixed to a document by another person is the signature of the person giving the authority.
With that in mind, I do not think the first passage cited above from the judgment of Jenkins LJ was directed at all at what the position would be if the landlord had not been named in the section 25 notice. Whether the signature by an authorised agent is sufficient is one matter: whether the landlord needs to be named, and a fortiori if a person is named as landlord whether that needs to be a correct statement of the name of the competent landlord, is an altogether different matter.
In the alternative Mr Kirk relied on the words in regulation 4 which permit the degree of latitude inherent in the phrase that the notice is to be in the prescribed form or one substantially to the like effect. Here, it is said, it was the merest technicality that Philip Ross & Co, who were the landlord’s solicitors, did not name G D Investments Ltd. I cannot accept this. I have already concluded that the notices did not give the real substance of the information required by the statute. A form made out in such a way as not to give the real substance of the information required is not a form substantially to the like effect as the statutory form of notice.
For these reasons I conclude that the notices when given were invalid.
The second issue raised concerns waiver. On this we were supplied with an agreed statement of facts, to the effect that protracted correspondence passed between solicitors in the period from 1982 to 1985 on the basis that there was a live and valid application on foot in the Bloomsbury County Court under Part II of the Act, which application arose out of the notices which are the subject of this appeal, and that no suggestion was made in that correspondence that the validity of the notices was being or would be challenged. Further, between the date of the notices in 1982 and the date of the amendment of the originating applications in December 1985, no further facts came to light, or were suggested or disclosed in the correspondence between the solicitors, to affect the tenant’s mind or to give any indication as to what she thought about the identity of her landlord, apart from Mr Nadeem’s solicitors’ letter of November 12 1985. Prior to that letter nothing in the correspondence indicated that Mr Danzig was not the landlord.
Those being the facts, I can deal more shortly with the question of waiver. On those particular facts, on the face of the notices and in the light of the facts known to Dr Morrow, there was nothing to indicate to her or her advisers that the notices contained an erroneous statement so that they were, or might be, invalid. Nor was there anything so strange about the statement implicit in the notices served in 1982 in respect of the lease granted in 1980 that Mr Danzig was the landlord to cause Dr Morrow’s solicitors to make further inquiry. What they did was to serve counternotices and commence applications for new tenancies. On the evidence, the landlord’s solicitors never demurred at Mr Danzig being made the respondent, nor did they ever tell Dr Morrow’s solicitors of the true position. Dr Morrow’s solicitors were never disabused of their belief that Mr Danzig was indeed the competent landlord until the middle of November 1985, at which stage this invalidity point was taken with reasonable promptness.
We were referred on this to another passage in the judgment of Jenkins LJ in Tennant v London County Council. The issue in that case, as I have already indicated, was whether a section 25 notice signed by a person on behalf of the LCC had been duly signed by the landlord. There the court held that the notice was valid as having been duly signed, but Jenkins LJ added this on the question whether in any event the tenant had waived the objection to the signature of the notice (at p 441):
I do regard it as most desirable in cases under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, where time may be an important consideration, that parties who wish to take objection to the form or the validity of the proceedings should act promptly and not reserve objections of this sort until the proceedings have been on foot for a matter perhaps of months. Accordingly, had it been necessary for me to arrive at the conclusion on this part of the case, I would have been prepared to hold that any otherwise well-found objection there might be to the notice was, on the facts to which I have briefly referred, waived, so that the objection is no longer available to the tenant as a bar to the proceedings.
I respectfully agree that parties who wish to take objections of the nature of those taken in that case and in this case should act promptly. On the particular facts, however, that was a case where from the outset, from service of the notice, the tenant knew of the matter of which he subsequently complained; and thus he knew for some considerable time of the facts which were subsequently relied on by him as founding the objection. That is not this case: rather this is a case within the passage in the judgment of Romer LJ in Tennant v London County Council (at p 443) where he said this:
I can imagine a case where a notice terminating a tenancy might be subject to a latent or concealed defect which did not come to light and was not apprehended by the tenant until after he had taken some step which might be construed as accepting the validity of the notice. In such a case I do not myself think that he would be subject to the operation of the principle.
In the present case the steps taken by Dr Morrow, in serving|page:76| counternotices and commencing proceedings and not objecting to the validity of the notices, were all taken in ignorance of the fact that Mr Danzig was not the competent landlord.
Whether a failure to make inquiries could in appropriate circumstances give rise to a party wishing to challenge the validity of a notice being estopped from doing so or being held to have waived his right of challenge, is also not a matter which needs to be considered in this case, and so I say nothing on that. Here, on the very limited evidence before the court about the history of the transactions, there was no cause why Dr Morrow, acting reasonably, should not have taken the notices at their face value and acted (and over the next four years continued to act) on that footing, as she did without dissent from the landlord’s solicitors.
It was suggested that Dr Morrow, on receiving the notices from a person of whom she did not know, should have taken the point about possible invalidity there and then and made this point when serving counternotices. On matters involving waiver, or estoppel, or election each case turns on its own particular facts, and on the facts of this case I can see no basis on which Dr Morrow was obliged so to act, so that her failure to do so precluded her from taking the point thereafter.
I should add, finally, that Mr Lightman submitted en passant that the defect in these notices was a defect which in any event was not capable of being waived. I do not accept this. I can see no reason why this particular type of defect should be accorded some particular immunity regarding waiver.
For these reasons, for my part I would respectfully disagree with the learned judge’s decision and hold that both notices were invalid and Dr Morrow is not precluded from asserting the invalidity of the notices as she now seeks to do, and would accordingly allow this appeal.
Agreeing, NEILL LJ said: The first question which arises for decision in this appeal is whether the notices served on the appellant on June 16 1982 were valid notices under the provisions of section 25 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. Section 25(1) is in these terms:
The landlord may terminate a tenancy to which this Part of this Act applies by a notice given to the tenant in the prescribed form specifying the date at which the tenancy is to come to an end.
Section 66(1) provides:
Any form of notice required by this Act to be prescribed shall be prescribed by regulations made by the Lord Chancellor by statutory instrument.
The regulations made under the Act prescribe that a notice to be given under section 25 shall be in the Form No 7 set out in the schedule to the regulations or in a form substantially to the like effect. In my view it is clear that a notice under section 25 must include all the matters prescribed or indicated in Form No 7 in so far as they may be relevant, so as to give proper information to the tenant to enable him to deal with the situation referred to in the notice. So much appears from the judgment of Barry J in Barclays Bank Ltd v Ascott [1961] 1 WLR 717 at p 722, in a passage which has been approved in this court.
In Tegerdine v Brooks (1977) 36 P & CR 261 the Court of Appeal had to consider a case where the notice omitted some of the notes set out in Form No 7. The court held that in the circumstances of that particular case the notes were irrelevant, so that the omission of the notes did not invalidate the notice. But it seems quite clear from the judgments in that case that a notice which is incomplete or inaccurate in a relevant respect is a bad notice. The question then arises: Is the name and identity of the landlord a relevant piece of information to be included in the statutory notice and to be imparted to the tenant so that he or she may be in a position to deal with the situation referred to in the notice? I have no doubt that, save perhaps in an exceptional case, this information is relevant and that a notice under section 25 should include the name of the landlord. This requirement of the regulations is in my judgment a quite different matter from the question whether persons other than the landlord may be entitled to sign a notice in the name, or on behalf, of the landlord. I would therefore answer this first question by saying that in my view the learned judge came to the wrong conclusion and that the notices served in this case were not valid notices.
I turn to the second question. If the notices were invalid, is the appellant, Dr Morrow, now debarred, either by reason of the doctrines of election or waiver or by reason of some estoppel, from relying on their invalidity? On this aspect of the case I do not consider that I can usefully add to what has already been said by Nicholls LJ.
In these circumstances I agree that in my judgment this appeal should be allowed.
Also agreeing, SLADE LJ said: I only wish to add a few observations on the first issue, out of deference to the learned judge with whom we are differing and to Mr Kirk’s well-sustained argument on behalf of the respondent.
I agree with my lords that the fact that Mr Danzig was authorised to act on behalf of G D Investments Ltd as its general agent has no relevance to the question whether the notices purportedly given on behalf of the landlord in the present case were valid. For this is not a case of a notice to quit given at common law but a notice given under the particular statutory framework laid down by the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954.
For my part, I think that the notices of June 16 1982 were clearly not in the form prescribed by that Act, since they did not specify the name and address of the landlord as the prescribed form contemplates. Regulation 4 of the Landlord and Tenant (Notices) Regulations 1957 permits the use of the forms in the appendix to the regulations, or ‘forms substantially to the like effect’. The relevant test to be applied in determining the sufficiency or otherwise of a notice given by the landlord under the Act which is not in the prescribed form is, I think, that stated by Barry J in Barclays Bank v Ascott [1961] 1 WLR 717 at p 722. This test, which was approved by this court in Tegerdine v Brooks (1977) 36 P & CR 261 has already been quoted by Nicholls LJ in his judgment and I will not repeat it. Applying it to the present case, I am satisfied that the landlord’s notices of June 16 1982 did not give such information to the appellant as would enable her to deal in a proper way with the situation referred to in the notices. The situation with which those notices confronted her was one in which she was required, within two months after the giving of the notices, to notify ‘the landlord’ whether or not she would be willing to give up possession of the premises on the dates of termination of her tenancies. She needed to know the true identity of the landlord for this purpose. She also needed to know the landlord’s true identity for the purpose of properly constituting any proceedings which she might wish to institute for the purpose of applying for a new tenancy. In view of the decision in Piper v Muggleton [1956] 2 QB 569 I respectfully disagree with the view of the learned judge that the proceedings which she launched against Mr Danzig following the receipt of the notices were properly constituted.
The notices of June 16 1982 both failed to name the correct landlord and, in addition, incorrectly represented that Mr Danzig was the landlord. They were not merely non-informative but also, albeit no doubt quite innocently, misleading in a most material respect. I think that these errors must have invalidated them. They cannot be said to have been in a form ‘substantially to the like effect’ as the prescribed forms.
For these reasons, in agreement with my lords, I am of opinion that the learned judge erred in his views on the first of the two main questions which arise on this appeal. I am also of opinion that he erred on the second issue. On this aspect I do not wish to add anything of my own. I, too, would allow this appeal.
The appeal was allowed to the extent that the two notices were declared invalid; the applicant to have the costs of a hearing on February 14, of the appeal and of the action, the costs of the action and of the February hearing to be taxed on Scale 3.
