OK Bar Property Law 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A tenant remains in possession after a one-year lease expires and the landlord accepts a monthly rent check. What tenancy exists?
- Tenancy at sufferance
- Tenancy at will
- Periodic tenancy (Correct answer)
- A new one-year term
Correct answer: Periodic tenancy
Acceptance of rent from a holdover tenant creates a periodic tenancy measured by the rent payment interval in most jurisdictions.
Question 2: A landlord fails to fix a broken heating system in winter despite notice, making the apartment unlivable. The tenant moves out and stops paying rent. The tenant's best defense to a rent suit is:
- Constructive eviction (Correct answer)
- Actual partial eviction
- Retaliatory eviction
- Frustration of purpose
Correct answer: Constructive eviction
A landlord's failure to remedy conditions that substantially interfere with habitability, followed by the tenant vacating within a reasonable time, constitutes constructive eviction.
Question 3: A lease bars assignment without the landlord's consent. The tenant transfers the remaining lease term to X anyway. The transfer is:
- Void
- Valid but a breach giving the landlord remedies (Correct answer)
- Valid only as a sublease
- Automatically a surrender of the lease
Correct answer: Valid but a breach giving the landlord remedies
Under the majority rule, an assignment made in violation of a consent clause is effective but breaches the lease, allowing the landlord to pursue remedies.
Question 4: For 20 years, A openly drives across B's Oklahoma land on a visible dirt road without permission. B sues to stop the crossings. A's best claim is:
- Easement by necessity
- Prescriptive easement (Correct answer)
- Easement by implication
- Irrevocable license
Correct answer: Prescriptive easement
Open, notorious, hostile, and continuous use of another's land for the 15-year prescriptive period in Oklahoma creates a prescriptive easement.
Question 5: O owns two lots and sells the rear landlocked lot to A with no mention of access. A's strongest claim for access over O's retained lot is:
- Easement by necessity (Correct answer)
- Prescriptive easement
- Express easement
- License coupled with an interest
Correct answer: Easement by necessity
An easement by necessity arises when a common owner severs land and the conveyed parcel is left without access to a public road.
Question 6: A holds an easement across B's land to reach A's parcel. A later buys B's parcel. What happens to the easement?
- It is suspended until the parcels are separated
- It is extinguished by merger (Correct answer)
- It continues and passes with the land
- It converts to a license
Correct answer: It is extinguished by merger
When the dominant and servient estates come into common ownership, the easement is extinguished by merger and does not automatically revive.
Question 7: A sublessee fails to pay rent. May the landlord recover the rent directly from the sublessee under the original lease?
- Yes, because the sublessee occupies the premises
- Yes, because rent covenants run with the land
- No, because there is neither privity of estate nor privity of contract with the sublessee (Correct answer)
- No, unless the sublease was recorded
Correct answer: No, because there is neither privity of estate nor privity of contract with the sublessee
A sublessee is in privity with only the original tenant, so the landlord cannot sue the sublessee for rent absent an assumption agreement.
OK Bar Property Law 3
A tenant remains in possession after a one-year lease expires and the landlord accepts a monthly rent check.
What tenancy exists?