Property disputes – landlord and tenant, or otherwise – are another ‘hot issue’ for substantial enterprises. Few legal areas have such disparity between the interests of the respective parties. It seems almost everything the landlord wants are things that will be in conflict with the tenant’s best interests, and vice versa. It’s also one of the few highly technical areas of law that still remain: miss the deadline or serve a defective notice and you might actually end up worse off than you were before.
And land is not getting any more plentiful in this island country of ours, and the cost of acquiring or renting property is always going up. So where the interest of landlord and tenant come most ferociously into conflict, and end up in the court, the stakes can be very high; and if the stakes are high, the cost is not going to be far behind.
Where there is a dispute in this area, it is unlikely that it is ‘voluntary’ for either party. But when it becomes necessary, alternative ways of funding the litigation may be the difference between keeping the dispute as just one element of your ongoing business or having to make it subservient to the need to finance the dispute which must be successful.
