Ruminations hasn’t researched commercial eviction law as it exists in every state, but wherever it has, one principle stands out. Eviction is an equitable, not a legal, remedy. Courts don’t have to evict a tenant and won’t do so for minor defaults. This approach is a subset of a legal “equitable” maxim: “Equity abhors a forfeiture.” A tenant’s “leasehold estate” is a property interest, and taking away a valuable property over a triviality is not what courts are supposed to do. Volumes have been written about this (and other) legal maxims. Not here; not today.
As to evictions, what varies from court to court, even in the same jurisdiction, is what judges consider to be “minor.” We’ll illustrate that today using “failure to maintain lease-required insurance coverages” as an example. [Read more…]
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It’s a funny thing about this business. After all is said and done, you still need to know the “law.” And, by “law,” we aren’t thinking about the “law in general.” Instead, we are thinking about the “law” in the place where it matters. Almost always, that’s the state where the property in question is located. In today’s world, it’s not possible to know everything, everywhere. But, what is possible is to know the “questions.” There are some universal concepts. Not all of those concepts are universal, fixed rules such as the rule that if valid rent is unpaid, the tenant can’t stay. The most important universal concept is that the law is not the same throughout the more than 51 jurisdictions that make up the United States. In most cases, the law is similar, but the law is not the same. As with many “learned professions,” knowing the questions to ask is the hard part. That’s the real challenge we face. Finding answers is easy. Said another way, if you want to have your agreements, such as leases and guaranties, mean what you have said, then you have to be aware of the way the law differs jurisdiction to jurisdiction. 
When a carpenter or other craftsperson needs to make “that final adjustment,” she or he reaches into the toolbox and out may come a shim. We’ve all seen shims used, but not everyone knows they have a name. Those wedges, washers, and thin strips of material used to align parts or make them fit are called “shims.” We who draft agreements of every type also use shims. Reluctant as Ruminations is to use the word “all” and mean “all,” today’s use seems accurate. Who among us hasn’t slipped in at least one “notwithstanding anything to the contrary” into every agreement longer than several pages? That’s using a shim because it makes the parts of the agreement “fit” together.
Today’s Ruminations is triggered by a court decision that may not have reached the “correct” result. If that suspicion is correct, then why do we promulgate its holding? There’s a simple answer. Had more talent been employed in negotiating the agreement dissected by the court, there would have been no court involvement. There would also be a different blog posting today.
We’ve written about guaranties before, most directly in postings that can be seen by clicking: 
What is every document writer’s nightmare (or at least one of their nightmares)? How about a mere “typo”? “Typo,” short for “typographical error,” is (as all readers already know), “an error (as of spelling) in typed or typeset material.” Count both the “open” and “close” parentheses in the following recital from a 17-1/2 million dollar loan guaranty:
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