Feature
June 26, 2023
Renting to a food truck is generally riskier than renting to an established business.
Drafting Tips
June 26, 2023
Unlike so many other aspects of the commercial leasing business, methods of paying rent haven’t changed all that much over the years. The majority of tenants still mail out their monthly checks to the landlord. However, a growing number of businesses prefer to remit their rent electronically...
Owner Wins
June 26, 2023
What Happened: An indoor cannabis cultivator operated under an oral lease while negotiating the terms of a written agreement. But after two years of fruitless negotiations, the landlord decided enough was enough and served the tenant a 30-day notice to quit. When the tenant refused to leave, the...
Owner Loses
June 26, 2023
What Happened: With the HVAC system on the fritz, the heat inside the office building became so intense that a tenant’s employee passed out and had to be sent to a hospital, resulting in an OSHA heat stress complaint. At least that’s what the tenant argued. The landlord contended that...
Feature
May 25, 2023
Don’t get burned if the tenant doesn’t complete the improvements work.
Plugging Loopholes
May 25, 2023
Federal and state laws make property owners liable for environmental damage done by a tenant. That makes it imperative to verify that tenants comply with those laws. But a tenant may refuse to grant you access to inspect or perform environmental testing for that purpose. And without clear lease...
Winners & Losers
May 25, 2023
When tenants go out of business landlords pay the price. One way to cushion the financial blow is to go after the tenant’s parent corporation for the unpaid rents and other revenues owed under the lease. But without an express lease guaranty, holding a corporation liable for the debts of its...
Owner Wins
May 25, 2023
What Happened: Operating a Bitcoin mining business requires unusually high amounts of electricity. Miffed at learning this lesson the hard way, an office building landlord threatened a Bitcoin tenant with eviction. When the electric company later shut down the tenant’s power after...
Owner Loses
May 25, 2023
What Happened: An insurance company tenant that had leased office space in the same building for nearly 15 years wanted out when a new owner acquired the property. In May 2019, the parties agreed to modify the lease duration to end on June 30, 2020, one year before the lease’s written...
Owner Wins
May 25, 2023
What Happened: A fitness center asked its landlord to refund the rent it paid during the 15 weeks that it couldn’t operate because government COVID-19 shutdown orders were in effect. The landlord refused. So, the tenant sued. Both sides moved for summary judgment—that is, a ruling on...
