INTRODUCTION

Commercial leases occupy a significant position in the law of landlord and tenant, imposing a complex web of obligations upon both parties that, taken together, determine the conditions under which demised premises are occupied, maintained, and ultimately vacated. Where premises deteriorate structurally, the precise allocation of repairing obligations between landlord and tenant becomes a matter of acute legal and practical importance. The tenant who finds itself occupying premises declared structurally unsafe must navigate questions of its own covenant compliance, the independence of the landlord's obligations, the basis upon which it may lawfully determine the lease, and the prospects of recovering monies already disbursed.

These questions have engaged the courts of England and Wales over many decades and, by reason of Sierra Leone's inherited common law tradition, are equally applicable in that jurisdiction. The fundamental principle that covenants in a lease are generally independent unless expressly made conditional was settled as early as 1777 in Boone v Eyre and has been consistently applied to the landlord-tenant relationship ever since. The practical corollary of this principle is that a landlord cannot invoke a tenant's breach as a justification for non-performance of his own repairing obligations, a proposition of obvious significance where the structural condition of premises is in dispute between the parties.

This article proceeds as follows. Section II addresses the nature and scope of repairing obligations in commercial leases, distinguishing between those attaching to the tenant and those borne by the landlord. Section III examines the doctrine of independent covenants and its consequences for a landlord who seeks to rely upon alleged tenant breaches in deflecting his own liability for structural disrepair. Section IV considers the tenant's right to vacate premises rendered unsafe by the landlord's default, addressing both the substantive and procedural requirements for lawful termination. Section V analyses the law governing alterations and unauthorised subletting, being the specific breaches alleged against the tenant in this context. Section VI examines the recoverability of advance rent following a landlord's fundamental breach. Section VII offers concluding observations.