Source: http://blogs.harvard.edu/jsinger/category/leaseholds/
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 13:30:14+00:00

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A new Nevada statute allows domestic violence victims to move out and terminate any obligations under an existing lease. 2013 Nev. Stat. 301.
New Hampshire law allows tenancies to be created at-will; that means they can be terminated by either party at any time. When the landlord lost the property through foreclosure, the tenancy ended automatically and no new landlord/tenant relationship was established merely because the tenant kept living on the property. Nor did a state statute that specifically prohibited self-help eviction, N.H. Ev. Stat. §540-A, apply in such a case. Nonetheless, the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that summary process was available to evict recover possession of the property and that this available procedure impliedly removed the self-help option. Evans v. J Four Realty, LLC, 62 A.3d 869 (N.H. 2013).
The Massachusetts Appeals Court reaffirms that, unlike residential landlords, commercial landlords have no duty to repair the leased premises in the absence of a contractual obligation to do so. Marino v. Mystic Realty Trust, 2012 WL 4033738, 82 Mass. App. Ct. 1113 (Sept. 14, 2012). The opinion applied established Massachusetts law. Humphrey v. Byron, 850 N.E. 2d 1044 (Mass. 2006). A consequence of this no duty rule is that commercial landlords owe no duty to exercise reasonable care to assure that visitors are not subject to unreasonable risk of harm while on the leased premises. Commercial landlords do have a duty to maintain common areas and thus must protect visitors from unreasonable risk of harm there.
Banks that have obtained title to foreclosed properties traditionally would sell them quickly but the current real estate malaise resulting from the subprime crisis has made it difficult for them to do so. The result is that many properties remain on the books of the banks. Under state property law, the banks have the obligations all landowners have to comply with housing codes and the warranty of habitability. But many banks do not have established procedures for keeping track of all the individual properties they own, especially when the mortgages to those properties were securitized, making the owner of the trust that owns those mortgages the effective landlord of thousands of homes. Both localities and tenants are having to deal with the failure of banks to comply with regulations mandating maintenance of rental properties. read article.
Many courts uphold acceleration clauses in commercial leases that require tenants to pay the rest of the rent due for the remainder of the lease term if the tenant breaches the lease. Such clauses are usually not enforced in the context of residential leases because they disclaim the duty to mitigate damages. The only issue for acceleration clauses in commercial leases is whether the amount exceeds a reasonable estimate of the likely damages from breach and thus constitute an invalid “penalty” rather than a valid liquidated damages clause. See, e.g., Cummings Properties, LLC v. National Communications Corp., 869 N.E.2d 617 (Mass. 2007). Many courts make this determination by assuming that the landlord still has a duty to mitigate damages by attempting to relet the premises and thus the remaining rent will be invalid if it far exceeds the damages that would be sustained if the landlord found a replacement tenant. See HealthSouth Rehabilitation Corp. v. Falcon Management Co., 799 So. 2d 177 (Ala. 2001). However, some courts hold that the duty to mitigate damages is irrelevant in this context. NPS, LLC v. Minihane, 886 N.E.2d 670 Mass. 2008). The Massachusetts Appeals Court recently explained that this means that it does not matter when the breach occurs during the course of the lease, i.e., at the beginning when many months or years of rent are left and the landlord might be able to obtain a replacement tenant and mitigate damages, or at the end of the lease when replacement of the tenant might be impossible within the remaining time. The only thing that matters is whether the figure chosen by the parties in the acceleration clause (the remaining rent for the lease term) is a reasonable estimate of the damages that might be sustained upon the tenant’s breach. Although this is a difficult determination to make, the court explained that acceleration clauses in commercial leases are presumptively enforceable and should be disregarded only if they are clearly unreasonable. Panagakos v. Collins, 80 Mass. App. Ct. 697, 2011 WL 5067707 (Mass. App. Ct. 2011).
The states disagree about whether parties to real estate transactions can sue each other for fraud when the contract of sale contains a “non-reliance clause” stating that neither party is relying on any representations made by the other party that are not included in the written contract. Some states allow such claims on the ground that “fraud vitiates consent” and such clauses do not amount to agreements to be defrauded. But other states hold that such clauses immunize the contracting parties from claims of fraud based on oral statements made prior to the deal. The Texas Supreme Court has waffled on this issue, first holding that contracts can be avoided on the ground of fraudulent inducement, Williams v. Glash, 789 S.W.2d 261, 264 (Tex. 1990), and then ruling that the sophisticated parties are free to bargain around this rule by non-reliance clauses, Schlumberger Technology Corp. v. Swanson, 959 S.W.2d 171 (Tex. 1997). See also Forest Oil Corp. v. McAllen, 268 S.W.3d 51 (Tex. 2008). However, the court clarified in Italian Cowboy Partners, Ltd. v. Prudential Ins. Co., 2011 Tex. LEXIS 291 (Tex. 2010), that a non-reliance clause in a real estate contract will not immunize a real estate seller from liability for fraud if it contains a “standard merger clause” which recites that no representations were made other than those in the contract. Only if the clause states that the buyer is not relying on oral statements made by the seller would the buyer be foreclosed from suing for damages for fraud or to rescind the agreement because of fraud. Another way to waive the right to sue for fraud is to do so directly by a clear statement waiving the right to sue for fraudulent inducement.
In this case, the court allowed tenants to rescind a restaurant lease and recover damages when the landlord lied about the condition of the premises which were afflicted with persistent sewer gas odor.

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