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It is a common term in a lease for the tenants to have to seek permission from the landlord if they want to do something new to or with the premises they let. Typically, such clauses specify that permission will not be 'unreasonably withheld'. However, what seems reasonable to one person may seem unreasonable to another, as a recent dispute shows. It involved a tenant who wished to apply for planning permission for its let commercial premises to be used for residential purposes. Under the lease, the application required the...

There are special rules for people working in the UK on short-term secondment from employers based abroad. Many do not become taxpayers under the UK tax system. When one such person contacted HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to clarify his position, he was told that as he earned less than £100,000 in a tax year, he would not have to file a UK tax return. He also enquired about the deductibility of various expenses such as rent and maintenance and was told that if he were a UK taxpayer, these...

With the holiday season upon us, a recent case shows that there are limits to the liability of tour operators when accidents occur, especially when they are the result of rash behaviour. The case involved a man who fell from the balcony of his hotel in Tenerife and sustained serious injuries. When he and his family closed the sliding door, it had locked them out. In order to effect a re-entry to their room, the man decided to climb onto the adjoining balcony. However, he placed his weight on a...

A divorced man who remarried in his late 50s made a new will in 1998, one year after the marriage, which left his entire estate to his new wife. After he died, a home-made will was discovered, made shortly before his death. This left virtually his entire estate to one of his sons, appointing the son and a grandson as executors. The witnesses to the will were the grandson's girlfriend and her mother. The man's widow claimed that the will was a fake. It then emerged that the original of the...