Continuous operation lease provisions are contentious. The ability of a landlord to impose such an obligation within a particular lease is determined by the relative bargaining power of the parties. All bargaining power, like all politics, is local. If a tenant doesn’t really “need” to be at a particular property and the landlord really “needs” that (or any) tenant, then it’s unlikely that any resulting lease will include one. At least, in a rational world, that’s the way it would be.
Today, Ruminations will describe two unusual court decisions with the caveat that the fat lady hasn’t yet sung. Each are at the “preliminary injunction” stage, actually at the stage where two courts, in geographically distant jurisdictions, have ordered two different tenants, with different landlords, to keep their stores open. That’s where the similarity ends, as today’s blog posting will tell.
[As to the two cases, each being in the preliminary injunction stage, no final decision has been reached. All the separate courts have ruled is that what the tenants were “doing yesterday,” i.e., operating a store, they need to do “today,” i.e., keep operating that store (at least until a final decision is reached). That means not all the facts and legal arguments are yet on the table. For that reason, Ruminations won’t be analyzing the living daylights out of either case. We’ll be waiting for a final “call” as to one of those cases (the Indiana one) before going down that road.] [Read more…]
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