The Most Crucial Commercial Lease Cases

Law, however, is a peculiar field which, like baseball, lends itself well to actual statistical analysis of “greatness.” These “greatest” cases are so heavily cited that they have demonstrated their significant impact on landlords' and tenants' businesses. Hence, no litigator or drafter would dare to enter either a courtroom or a lease negotiation without a thorough knowledge of these cases. A mere handful of cases have achieved that kind of influence in commercial landlord-tenant relations. While across the United States there are a number of localities having enacted residential rent regulation, for the most part in the commercial arena, the principles of governing law are those of the common law, whose roots and development over the past thousand years are found originally in Britain and then later in the United States. These cases cover stability in leasing law, mitigation of damages, lease interpretation, lease enforcement, lease violations, attorneys' fees, court stipulations, and actual and constructive eviction. While late night television talk show hosts would no doubt list these cases in inverse order of importance, this two-part article will use them to trace the lifetime of a leasehold from negotiation through breach and enforcement.