You don’t have to be in the retail property industry for very long before you first come across an access agreement. After all, not all properties are sitting right out there on a prime highway. A plot might be developable if it could be moved to a spot right along the “best” road, but it doesn’t work that way. So, deals are made allowing those traveling to and from one property to cross over an adjoining property. Often, these arrangements are mutual; sometimes they are not.

When we come across such an arrangement for the first time, we probably read the documents pretty carefully. Likely, when we get to our fifth or tenth such agreement, we skip over the boilerplate. One of those provisions is the one that reads something like: “will be binding upon and inure to the benefit of ….” After all, these provisions aren’t much more than, “blah, blah, blah.” We’ve seen them many times before and they are always the same – until they aren’t. That’s what a car dealer discovered about a combined access and sign license with the following provision: [Read more…]