The Court of Appeal has recently heard the case of No 1 West India Quay (Residential) Ltd v East Tower Apartments, and the attached article is an excellent summary of the position.

This case was widely reported last year when the lower courts found that a condition requiring payment of a fixed fee for the assignment, which the judge considered unreasonable, "tainted" the other two, reasonable, reasons given by the Landlord in refusing its consent. In other words, enforcement of the one unreasonable condition meant that the Landlord's refusal to consent to the assignment was unreasonable.

The Court of Appeal, however, found that there was no evidence to suggest that enforcement of the unreasonable condition was the deciding factor - the Landlord had provided an additional two good reasons for withholding its consent. The court found that the three reasons were free-standing, and if two of the reasons given were reasonable, the decision itself was reasonable.

Landlords across the country will be breathing a sigh of relief at this decision.

the Court of Appeal considered whether consent was unreasonably withheld where two of the grounds for refusal were reasonable, but a third had been held not to be