The Return Obligation Of Decoration Value Of Rental Housing

With the rapid development of market economy, the rental housing has become afrequent civil juristic act in social and economic life and housing lease disputes alsogrow with each passing day. The disputes rising from the decoration of the rentalhouse, especially caused by the ownership of decoration have become the focus ofhousing lease disputes. Because accessio system is not clearly established inReal Rights Law of the People’s Republic of China and relevant laws and regulations,the disputes can’t be judged timely or cause a chaos of different judgments. In thecited case in this paper, A company rented a house to B company. During the leasecontract, the lessee B company did some decoration of the rental house, and then Acompanies sold the house to B company. In this regard, B believes that A companysold the house with decoration (which should belong to B), so B sued A for unjustenrichment.The first issue in the case is that the ownership of decoration and ancillaryfacilities are owned by A company or B company? In order to solve this, I analyze theownership through accessio theory and make a conclusion that connexio decorationsbelong to A company and unconnexio decorations belong to B company. But ifanalyzed the ownership through our laws and regulations, there is no correspondingbasis. Refer to the processing rules about the decorations in judicial interpretations[2009] No.11, processing rules of accession system and unjust enrichment system areimplied, but also includes more responsibility of breach of contract, tort liability, faultliability, the principle of fairness and other systems. These systems are intermixed,which makes the accessio system and the unjust enrichment system has not clearcontext and can’t be directly referenced in this case. Finally, I make some textualanalysis and goal analysis to the conventions about the decorations between theparties and find that although A company and B company did not directly agree on theownership of the decoration during the duration of the lease contract, they agree the ownership all belongs to A company when the lease contract expires or the contract beunilaterally broken by A or B company. Therefore, it shows that when termination ofthe contract of any kind, the connexio decorations should be owned by A company,and B company also can get reasonable compensation according to the contract. Itdoes not violate the principle of fairness. The author concluded that, according to thehousing rental contracts for decorations, the case should be identified that theconnexio decorations should be owned byAcompany.When the issue of the ownership has been cleared, I analyze other focus in thecase one by one according to the elements of unjust enrichment—A Company hassold the decoration or not, A company constitute unjust enrichment or not. The finalconclusion is that after A company selling the house, the annexed part of thedecoration has also been sold, but the benefits it gained which based on theconsistency and equality of the rights and obligations of the leasing contract shouldnot constitute unjust enrichment; B company’s claim can be upheld only under thecircumstances that A company did illegal dispose of unconnexio decoration andmaking B company suffer the losses. And refer to the value of connexio decoration, Bcompany’s litigation request can not be established and A company should not bearthe return obligation.