Case Notes

No Eviction

In a recent decision from a court in South Florida, a judge ruled a long-term commercial tenant could not be evicted for non-payment of fees for services provided by the landlord where the latter had apparently retaliated against the tenant for making complaints about that service.

The tenant, Miami Juice Corp., entered into a lease with LSB Investment Corp. in 2009 to operate a healthy-food restaurant in the landlord's Sunny Isles Beach shopping plaza. The lease was for a term of five years, with four renewal options of five years each. These options could be exercised by giving the landlord notice in writing. The tenant exercised the first of these options in 2014, but did so verbally.

Part of the agreement was that the landlord would provide valet parking services to the tenant's customers. Miami Juice found the service deficient, however, complaining to the landlord that its staff lost customers' keys, damaged their vehicles and permitted people not patronizing the shopping center to take up valuable parking spaces. In its suit against the landlord, Miami Juice claimed that rather than fixing these problems, the landlord instructed the valet parking staff to turn the restaurant's customers away, and had Miami Juice customers' cars towed away if they managed to self-park in the lot. When Miami Juice stopped paying for the valet service, LSB served the restaurant's owner with an eviction letter.

The landlord counter-sued, claiming Miami Juice did not properly renew its lease and had, at any rate, breached the agreement by not paying for valet services.

Following a three-day trial, Judge Thomas Rebull determined that Miami Juice had renewed the lease by verbal agreement, and that LSB had accepted the renewal despite the lack of a writing.