Feature
April 29, 2024
Your due diligence must account for special legal risks.
At least some form of marijuana is now legal in all but six states. In addition to a wildly popular product, marijuana ventures have lots of capital and a pressing need for commercial space, especially in the 24 states (and the...
Pop Quiz
April 29, 2024
About every 30 seconds, somebody commits a violent crime in the U.S., according to the FBI. Crimes occur in stores, malls, office buildings, restaurants, bars, nightclubs, theaters, medical centers, parking garages, and countless other kinds of properties that are commercially leased. And when they...
Owner Loses
April 29, 2024
What Happened: A lease required the tenant that would occupy 45 percent of the space in a four-story building to pay 42.98 percent of the taxes on the property. The agreement contained a tax escalation clause requiring the tenant to pay the proportionate share of tax increases on the building. The...
Owner Wins
April 29, 2024
What Happened: In 2019, a tenant signed a six-and-a-half-year lease on property to be used solely “for the purpose of operating a pet and cat boarding facility” and banning other uses without the landlord’s prior written consent. In operating the business, the tenant occasionally...
Feature
March 29, 2024
Ramifications could extend beyond New York.
Drafting Tips
March 29, 2024
Allowing tenants to sublease the property they lease from you to third-party subtenants over whom you have no direct control carries a degree of risk. Since you don’t have a direct contract with the subtenant, you may be dependent on the tenant to enforce the terms of the sublease and have no...
Plugging Loopholes
March 29, 2024
Percentage rent leases commonly permit tenants to deduct or exclude certain kinds of transactions that don’t generate a profit for the tenant from the gross sales on which percentage rent is due. Typical examples include revenues from gift wrapping, deliveries, repairs to items purchased from...
Owner Wins
March 29, 2024
What Happened: An office tenant didn’t exercise its renewal option on a lease that expired in April 2022. However, the tenant continued to pay, and the landlord continued to accept rent after the expiration date. A few months later, when the tenant ran into problems that interfered with his...
Owner Wins
March 29, 2024
What Happened: A tenant leased the ground-floor store in a building for use as “a first-class convenience shop doing business as ‘AM PM Market’.” Just over a year into the 10-year lease, the landlord’s property manager discovered that a company called Bing Bong was in...
Owner Loses
March 29, 2024
What Happened: A tenant assigned its lease for commercial office space in Texas to its corporate sibling. The landlord and new tenant then amended the terms of the original lease. After evicting the new tenant for nonpayment of rent, the landlord sued the old tenant for the new tenant’s...