ABSTRACT
In Quinlan v Philip,42 the facts of which have already been outlined, Wooding CJ emphasised that the Rent Restriction Ordinance placed the onus of proof on the landlord to show that less hardship would be caused by granting than by refusing a possession order, unlike under the English legislation, where the onus was the other way; that is, it was on the tenant to show that greater hardship would be caused by granting than by refusing the order. Under the Trinidadian legislation, ‘if in the result the issue lies in medio, it must be resolved in favour of the tenant’.43 On the particular facts, where the landlord had offered the tenant an apartment as alternative accommodation for the house presently occupied by the tenant, it was held that the landlord had not satisfied the onus of proof of hardship, since the apartment was clearly less adequate for the tenant in that it had smaller bedrooms and a higher rent and, moreover, ‘if the [tenant] were transferred there, she would have to put up with the inconvenience of uprooting herself from a home in which she has lived for 14 years and of settling into inadequate accommodation elsewhere’.44 On the other hand, ‘the landlord having bought in the expectation of moving into a house of his own would suffer disappointment and, maybe, receive an inadequate return on the money he expended, but all that is but the result of the calculated risk he took, and in the circumstances should count little for hardship’.45
