Greasy goings on at the Pink Gentleman’s Club

Restaurants/fast food outlets often face complaints about smells, noise and grease. 

In HLS Leisure Ltd v Darville and Sons Ltd, the High Court, on appeal, had to decide who was liable for the resulting nuisance – the landlord or the tenant - where a noisy ventilation duct, which was dripping grease, fell partly in the landlord’s premises and partly in the fast-food tenant’s demise. 

The claim was brought by another tenant, HLS (operating the Pink Gentleman’s Club in Windsor), against the landlord, Darville. HLS complained that the noise and grease were impacting the entrance to its strip club and that Darville was liable for maintaining the duct, rather than the fast-food tenant, Gourmet Grill. 

The entrance to the Pink Gentleman’s Club was not at street level but instead via a covered loading bay at the back of the building. The ventilation duct formed part of a kitchen extract system running from the Gourmet Grill and evacuating into the loading bay, which was some distance from Gourmet Grill’s premises. 

The court had to carefully consider the terms of Gourmet Grill’s poorly drafted lease to decide whether the duct fell within its demise. If it did, then it would be liable for the nuisance caused to HLS; if it did not, then Darville would be liable. 

Under Gourmet Grill’s lease, the loading bay was part of the “common parts” of the landlord’s building.  Furthermore, the ventilation duct was outside the boundaries of the demised premises as shown on the lease plan.  These factors pointed to Darville being liable. 

However, the Gourmet Grill demise, included “fixtures of every kind that are in or on that land” except “any fixtures installed by the tenant... that can be removed from the land without defacing it”.  On the facts before it, the court held that the ventilation system was a single system and was a fixture that formed part of the tenant’s demise noting that ‘it is entirely possible for an item which is partly in or on the relevant premises, but partly external to it… to be regarded as part of those premises”.   It then considered the exception in the lease and concluded that, although the tenant had probably installed the duct, it could not be removed without defacing the land, so the exemption did not apply.  Consequently, the High Court upheld the lower court’s decision that Darville was not liable to repair and maintain the ventilation duct. 

This decision turned on the wording of the relevant lease and the background facts. However, the court’s interpretation, in the face of some challenging lease drafting which had complicated the issue, made commercial sense. 

Subscribe to our latest insights by topic here.