For some time now I've enjoyed following my old friend David Cooper's epic battle on behalf of a quite unique business in London's Jermyn Street that sells incredibly expensive carpets. Many readers will know David - a larger-than-life character, hugely experienced and one of the sharpest legal minds in the business. He's been acting for several years now for S Franses, which for more than two decades has been in business tucked in the corner of the Cavendish Hotel on London's Jermyn Street one of the most prestigious in the capital and home to several internationally renowned brands and restaurants. Many of them have been there for decades, even centuries. Some time ago, the hotel's owner moved to refuse S Franses a new lease on the grounds that it wanted to use the space to create two A1 units in place of one. Cutting a very long story short, David managed not only to appeal the original ruling in the hotel's favour to the Supreme Court, leapfrogging the Court of Appeal, which is pretty unusual in itself, but was able to persuade the court that, in the words of another of my legal heroes, Lord Jonathan Sumption, a landlord can't rely on works he wouid not have carried out if the tenant had left voluntarily. It made headlines at the time because as my readers will appreciate, this is pretty fundamental to the interpretation of the 1954 Act.
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