Mannai makes the world go round! - or does it?
Mannai! is often the first word exclaimed in the panic-stricken moments when the world is falling apart because of the realisation that the document you have just served contains an error.
Is the established principle in Mannai Investment Co Ltd v Eagle Star Life Assurance Co Ltd always the saviour that it is cracked up to be?
It is a basic rule that requirements for the service and form of contractual notices must be strictly complied with. To mitigate the harshness of this principle, the House of Lords set forward the Mannai principle which would, in certain circumstances, mean that an error in a contractual notice may not always mean that the notice is defective.
York v Casey subsequently confirmed that the principle also applies to statutory notices.
Mannai may come to the rescue in circumstances when the reasonable recipient of a notice - with knowledge of the factual background, would not be perplexed by the error.
In Mannai, the House of Lords decided that even though there was an error in a break notice notice, the notice was otherwise clear and unambiguous as to the landlord's intention to end the lease. It was therefore right to adopt a sensible and commercial approach in the circumstances as the landlord's intention was clear.
Great, you might think. But the next question is, will Mannai work for all types of errors?
It is clear that the Mannai principle would save notices containing small typographical errors - but it should not be relied upon for all errors in notices.
The courts have confirmed that Mannai will not help you if:
- The notice is served on the wrong person or entity (Lemmerbell Ltd and Anor v Britannia LAS Direct Ltd)
- A statutory notice is missing information or the information contained is incorrect (Clickex Ltd v McCann)
- A statutory notice is not in the prescribed form (Sabella v Montgomery)
What is clear, is that this area of law is unclear.
It is difficult to reconcile the various decisions in Mannai cases, which makes it difficult to predict the outcome of a case where Mannai is being used to prevent a notice from becoming invalid.
Whether Mannai will assist to save a defective notice will turn on the facts of the case. So what is the best course of action? Getting it right first time, because if you don’t, you are stepping into the world of the unknown.
When serving notice, you should take care to comply with requirements as to service and form. In the words of Lord Hoffman:
"if the clause had said that the notice had to be on blue paper, it would have been no good serving a notice on pink paper, however clear it might have been that the tenant wanted to terminate the lease".
Our property litigation solicitors can assist you with serving notices statutory and contractual notices.