Court Opinion

ID: 9711439
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:31:42.825141+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:04.994129
License: Public Domain

DONIELSON, Presiding Judge
(dissenting).
I vigorously dissent. Lawyers all too often “split hairs” in their legal interpretation of documents and words. I much prefer to use the general, ordinary, and common meaning of words without any strain or violence to the common understanding of what those words mean. The Offer to Lease executed by both parties provides clear and unequivocal wording in my judgment. It states both in the Offer to Lease form and in the addendum that the tenant pays all utilities (Exhibit A). “All utilities” means all utilities, and we would be hard put to read into it that water (inside and out) was not an essential part of all utilities.
The actual lease (Exhibit B) specifically designates that the tenant is to pay “all charges” for certain utilities including water. I do not believe the catch-all phrase which refers to “utilities ... used in or upon the demised premises” is a limiting phrase which affects United’s obligation to pay all charges for water, including the charges for outside water usage.1
It is my view that this lease is not appreciably different than when a person rents a single-family residence, you rent it at a certain location and you get the yard or portion thereof and you get the utilities in or upon the premises, which means water inside and out. The majority makes this far more complicated than is justifiable, and it makes the Bar form lease more difficult to use. The trial court decision should be reversed.

. UTILITIES AND SERVICES. Tenant during the term of this lease, shall pay, before delinquency, all charges for use of telephone, water, sewer, gas, heat (if heating is Tenant’s responsibility), electricity power, air conditioning (if air conditioning is the Tenant’s responsibility), garbage disposal, trash disposal and not limited by the foregoing all other utilities and services of whatever kind and nature which may be used in or upon the demised premises.