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AUGUST, 1919.]
The Gazette of the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland.
23
Recent Decision.
Solicitors' Remuneration Act,
1881.
44
and
45
Vict., C.
44.
Costs of Lease:
"Rack Rent."
Prior to 1881 the Solicitors' charges in all
matters of conveyancing were regulated by the
length of the document prepared regardless of
the consideration or the importance of
the
matters involved. One of the principal objects
aimed at by the Conveyancing Act of 1881 was
the curtailment of the length of deeds by the
use of appropriate terms carrying the implication
of long covenants that were formerly properly
and necessarily set out in detail in every deed.
At the same time the Solicitors' Remuneration
Act, 1881, was passed with the object of in
troducing a short and simple method of deter
mining
the costs of ordinary conveyancing
matters, based on the amount of the consider
ation money involved.
As regards the Costs of Leases by the General
Order made in pursuance of
the Act,
two
separate tables of fees are provided. The first
table provides for the costs of leases at Rack
Rent other than a Mining Lease or a Lease for
Building Purposes. The second table deals with
the Costs of Conveyances in fee or for a freehold
estate reserving rent, or Building Leases reserving
rent or other long leases not at a Rack Rent.
The fees payable under the second table are
very much larger than those payable under the
first. The tables are not exhaustive, nor are
they mutually exclusive, and it is possible to
find in practice cases that do not fall under
either schedule, and then the only scale of costs
under which apparently the Solicitors' remun
eration can be determined is the old scale in
existence prior to the Solicitors' Remuneration
Act as altered by Schedule II in the General
Order made under the Act.
Questions of
the greatest difficulty are
frequently presented in regard to the words
" Rack Rent."
In the Public Health (Ireland)
Act, 1878 (41 and 42 Vict., C. 52, 1, 2) a " Rack
Rent" is defined as " a Rent which is not less
" than two-thirds of the full net annual va'lue of
" the property out of which the rent arises as
" ascertained under
the Acts relating to
the
" valuation of rateable property in Ireland." If
this definition could be utilised in the interpre
tation of the Genral Order under the Solicitors'
Remuneration Act, obviously the matter would
be one of supreme simplicity, but clearly a defin
ition made for the purposes of one Act is not
adaptable to another Act which is not even
in pari
materia
with the former Act. Accordingly the
meaning of " Rack Rent " is at large and has to
be sought elsewhere. There are few judicial
decisions for guidance, and the recent case of
In re Sawyer and Withall,
Solicitors, reported
1919 Weekly Notes 196 is therefore interesting
and instructive.
The facts of that case were a Lease was made
of property in London for a term of 61 years,
subject to a rent of £525 per annum :
it con-
:
tained covenants on the part of the lessee to
pay rent, land tax, sewer rates, and to do all
repairs and insure the premises.
It was ad-
j mittedly a long lease and the Solicitors for the
|
lessor contended that it was a lease
not at a
I
Rack Rent,
as there were undertakings to put
the premises in repair. The Solicitors relied
on
the Irish cases of exparte
Connolly
to
Sheridan
(1900) 1, I.R. 1, and
In re Hogan's
Estate
(1894) 1 I.R., 503.
Sargant J. held that
the lease was a lease at a Rack Rent, and there
fore the costs were fixed under Table I of the
General Order, and that the rent reserved in a
lease might be a Rack Rent whether the rent
reserved had been calculated on the basis of the
obligations as
to rates and taxes,^ and the
obligations as to repairs being wholly borne by
the tenant, or wholly by the
landlord, or
partly by the one and partly by the other.