Lessors may also bring a separate suit for damages brought about by the lessee's breach. The allowance of a separate suit indicates the General Assembly's realization that post-termination damages, including rents, are unknowable at the time of the institution of eviction proceedings. The statutory language is consistent with the idea that despite the termination of the lease the extent of the lessee's liability remains in doubt. Lessees are potentially liable for rents coming due under the agreement as long as the property remains unrented. The important corollary to that is that landlords have a duty, as all parties to contracts do, to mitigate their damages caused by a breach.
Landlords mitigate by attempting to rerent the property.
Their efforts to do so must be reasonable, and the reasonableness should be determined at the trial level. If the lessor has acted reasonably in attempting to secure a new tenant, the lessee is liable for the rent up to the point of the lessor's finding a new tenant, or the expiration of the lease, whichever is earlier. R.C. 1923.081 does note that those claims that are definite at the time of eviction, past due rent and other damages, may be joined with a forcible entry and detainer action. We thus find that R.C. Chapter 1923, in its allowance of separate actions under the lease by both parties does contemplate that lessees are liable to lessors for post-termination rent. We find that Cubbon is therefore flawed.