## Facts

- A landlord leased land to a tenant for a term of years, reserving rent payable at the four usual feast days.
- The landlord sued in debt for three years’ unpaid rent accrued during the lease term.
- The tenant admitted the lease and the rent reservation but alleged that an invading hostile army entered the premises during the English Civil War, expelled him, and kept him out of possession for about three years.
- The tenant asserted that, because he was forcibly dispossessed and could not take profits from the land, he should be excused from paying rent during the period of dispossession.
- The landlord demurred to the tenant’s plea.

## Issues

1. Whether a tenant is excused from paying rent reserved under a lease when an invading hostile force, without the tenant’s fault, dispossesses the tenant and prevents enjoyment of the premises.

## Decision

- The court entered judgment for the landlord.
- The tenant’s plea was held insufficient as a defense to the rent claim.
- The tenant remained liable for the rent arrears notwithstanding dispossession by enemy forces.

## Legal Principles

- Where the law imposes a duty and the obligated party is disabled from performance without fault and without remedy over, the law may excuse nonperformance.
- When a party, by contract, undertakes a duty or charge, the party must perform notwithstanding accidents or inevitable necessity, because the party could have allocated the risk by express agreement.
- Rent reserved under a lease is a duty created by the parties’ reservation (treated as a covenant in law), and it remains payable even if the tenant is expelled from possession by external events such as enemy action.
- Risk allocation in leases places “casual losses” on the tenant as the counterpart to the tenant’s ability to take “casual profits,” absent an express contractual qualification.

## Conclusion

The King’s Bench held that supervening events such as enemy occupation do not discharge a tenant’s contractual obligation to pay rent under a lease for years; absent an express term shifting the risk, contractual payment duties remain enforceable despite involuntary dispossession.


Paradine v. Jane, [1647] EWHC KB J5 (K.B.)