Owner Loses

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Facts: The lease between the owner of a warehouse and its tenant set out base rent for the first several years of the lease. Under the lease, every seven years the base rent would be adjusted to include the original base rent plus an amount calculated using changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which is published by the U.S. Department of Labor and is designed to measure changes over time in prices paid by urban consumers for various goods and services. This can include commercial leases.

Facts: A large national retailer of arts and crafts materials and a shopping center owner signed a lease with an ongoing cotenancy provision requiring the owner to lease the anchor store in thecenter to a regional or national tenant meeting certain criteria. If the owner fails to maintain an anchor tenant, the tenant would pay reduced “alternative rent.” The lease gives the tenant a continuing right to terminate if the ongoing cotenancy requirement isn’t met for six months or more.

Facts: A shopper suffered severe neurological and brain injuries when two teenagers at the center where she was shopping with her son threw a shopping cart from the fourth level of the center onto her at the ground level. (As a result of the assault, the teenagers were sentenced to six months in a juvenile residential facility.) The shopper sued the center’s owners, management, and two tenants—a price club and a discount furniture store.

Facts: A mall owner signed a 20-year ground lease with a tenant for space in which to operate a movie theater. The lease included several clauses concerning the allocation of real estate taxes between the owner and tenant, including who was responsible for having the premises assessed for taxes and the formula for how the tenant’s share of those taxes would be calculated.

Facts: A tenant that sold electronic equipment leased space in a shopping center in 1973. A significant provision of the lease—the excessive vacancies clause—provided for abatement of rent in the event that the occupancy of the shopping center dropped below a certain amount. Over the course of the next several decades, the tenant and owner agreed to multiple extension agreements, the last of which excused the tenant from paying percentage rent and required it to pay only fixed minimum rent.

Facts: The initial term of a lease between an owner and its tenant, a supermarket, was for 20 years and contained an option for the tenant to renew four times for five-year extension periods. Under the initial term, the lease would automatically renew unless the tenant notified the owner that it intended not to renew within 120 days of the end of the lease term.

Facts: The owner of a gas station leased the building used as a convenience store and the underlying lot to a tenant for a five-year term. The lease gave the owner the option of renewing the lease every five years, with a total of five additional five-year terms. There would be an increase in base rent each time the lease was renewed. The lease also contained an assignment clause providing the tenant with a right to transfer or assign the lease with the written consent of the owner “which shall not be unreasonably withheld.”

Facts: A mattress store tenant signed a lease with a shopping center owner for space next to a national chain grocery store. The monthly rent was $5,000. After the grocery store moved out of its space, the tenant stopped paying rent, gave a 60-day notice to the owner, and moved out. At that time it already owed two months of back rent, or $10,000.

Facts: An owner bought a building that already leased space to a restaurant, among other tenants. The tenants’ leases were assigned to the owner. The owner discovered that a tenant renting space for two bars and a delicatessen (restaurant tenant) in the building had been using the basement of the building for storage.

Facts: A pedestrian slipped and fell on ice in the parking lot of a shopping center. She sued the owner of the property. The owner asserted that the tenant that rented the store near the parking lot was obligated to keep not only its space and the area adjacent to the store but also the parking lot free from ice and snow. The owner sued the tenant, within the same lawsuit, for allegedly breaching its lease by not maintaining the parking lot. The tenant and the owner each asked the trial court for a judgment in its favor without a trial.