Monthly commercial law update: Top 5 developments in May

It's that time of the month again—here are the top 5 commercial law developments from last month (May 2014) taken from Lexis®PSL Commercial.

Competition law: CMA issues guidance on competition law for small businesses

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has published a guide to help small businesses comply with competition law. The guide focuses on protecting small businesses and consumers from anti-competitive behaviour.

The information in the guide provides a basic overview of the law and outlines the steps small businesses can take to comply with the law.

In addition, the CMA has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Serious Fraud Office on the basis on which both bodies will cooperate to investigate and/or prosecute individuals in respect of the criminal cartel offence established by section 188 of the Enterprise Act 2002, where serious or complex fraud is suspected (including price-fixing, limitation of production or supply, market-sharing and bid-rigging).

Contracts: Court of Appeal considers right to terminate for breach or anticipated breach

In Valilas v Januzaj, the Court of Appeal concluded that a dentist had not repudiated a facilities contract by telling the other party that he would be late making payments. The dentist's breach of contract did not constitute repudiation as the other party had retained substantially the whole benefit of the contract.

The agreement was between a dentist and his landlord for hiring the premises for his dental practice. The relationship between the dentist and the landlord began to deteriorate and after several months of non-payment, the landlord excluded the dentist from the premises and terminated the contact. The dentist claimed that the landlord had wrongfully terminated the contract. The landlord claimed that the dentist had committed a repudiatory breach of the contract by failing to pay. At first instance, the court found for the dentist, and the landlord appealed.

The Court of Appeal found that there was no term saying that time for payment was