MacFarlane v Booth

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judgment Date: 29 June 1909
• Date: 29 June 1909
• Court: King's Bench Division (Ireland)

Mac Farlane

and

Booth (1).

K. B. Div.

CASES

DETERMINED BY

THE KING'S BENCH DIVISION

OF

THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE IN IRELAND,

AND ON APPEAL THEREFROM IN

THE COURT OF APPEAL,

AND BY

THE COURT FOR CROWN CASES RESERVED.

1910.

Land Purchase Acts — Intervening interest — Sale to sub — tenant — Liability for arrears of rent — Irish Land Act, 1903 (3 Edw. 7, c. 37), ss. 15, 16, 25 — Land Law (Ireland) Act, 1887 (50 & 51 Vict. c. 33), s. 14.

Where the owner of an estate agrees to sell, under the Land Purchase Acts, a parcel of land to a sub-tenant in exclusive occupation thereof, and orders are made by the Irish Land Commission vesting the land in the subtenant, ordering payment into the Bank of Ireland of the purchase-money, and directing claims to attach to it, and declaring that the sub-tenant shall be deemed a tenant, and the parcel of land a holding, the sub-tenant is discharged from liability in respect of arrears of rent due to his immediate landlord.

Case Stated by Madden, J., on the hearing of a civil-bill appeal. The case set out as follows:—

“This was a civil bill for £18 19s., one year's rent alleged to be due and payable by the defendant out of part of the lands of Derrycash, up to and for the 1st November, 1907. The County Court Judge gave a decree for the full amount. From this decree

the defendant appealed, and the appeal was heard before me at Omagh on the 13th July, 1908. It was proved or admitted that the plaintiff held these lands from Mr. Frederick Acheson Montgomery Moore as a yearly tenant, after the expiration of a lease which had expired many years ago, at a yearly rent of £10 19s. 3d., and that the year's rent due on the 1st November, 1907, had been duly paid by plaintiff's agent to Mr. Denroche, the agent for the said Mr. F. A. M. Moore, on the 21st December, 1907. The defendant was a sub-tenant to the plaintiff of the said lands. In the year 1905 the said F. A. M. Moore was desirous of selling his whole estate, which comprised the said lands of which the defendant was sub-tenant, to his tenants, under the Land Purchase Acts; and the defendant, who was in exclusive occupation of the said lands as such sub-tenant, being desirous of purchasing the said lands under the said Land Purchase Acts, entered into negotiations with the plaintiff to purchase her tenancy from her in order to enable him to do so; but as the price of such tenancy could not be arranged between plaintiff and defendant, the negotiations fell through. Negotiations were then entered into between the said F. A. M. Moore and the defendant for the sale of the said lands by the said F. A. M. Moore to the defendant, as a subtenant, under the provisions of section 15 of the Irish Land Act, 1903. Of these negotiations the...