Court Opinion

ID: 9711989
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:43:48.859592+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:09.006388
License: Public Domain

SULLIVAN, Judge,
concurring.
As noted in City of Bloomington v. Kuruzovich (1987) Ath Dist., Ind.App., 517 N.E.2d 408, quoted in part by the majority opinion, not all of the terms and conditions of the original lease are incorporated into a holdover tenancy. When the original lease was for more than one year, the holdover term is from year to year. Id. at 411. It would not, therefore, be unreasonable to conclude that a contractual provision particularly unfavored in the law, such as an exculpatory provision, might be excluded from the terms and conditions of a holdover tenancy.
Exculpatory clauses are carefully seruti-nized even when specifically agreed to by the parties. Weaver v. American Oil Co. (1971) 257 Ind. 458, 276 N.E.2d 144. Such extremely harsh, if not unconscionable, provisions might well draw even more unfavorable scrutiny if merely incorporated by inference into a landlord-tenant relationship.
If terms and conditions of an original lease (other than the duration of the tenancy) are to be excluded from a holdover relationship, that determination should come from the General Assembly or the Indiana Supreme Court.
Be that as it may, I am unwilling to state that a holdover lessee might, after the fact, bind himself to favorable provisions but disavow those which are unfavorable.
For this reason I concur in the reversal and remand.