We’ve written about guaranties before, most directly in postings that can be seen by clicking: HERE and HERE. Today, we drill down to the enforceability of a lease guaranty after the lease has been modified, but without notice to or knowledge of the guarantor. Today’s Ruminating is informed by a January, 2018 unpublished opinion from the Maryland Court of Special Appeals. [Readable by clicking: HERE.]
A church’s lease was guaranteed by its Pastor, his wife, and six other church members. The church defaulted and its landlord sued for the remaining rent under a three-year extension properly signed by the Pastor on behalf of the church, but without the knowledge of the six church members. In fact, they didn’t even have a hint that the lease had been extended despite each being some form of “leader” in the church, though those roles appeared to be substantially ceremonial. Their only financial connection to the church was their obligation to tithe to it. The lower court described them as “commercially” unsophisticated.
The lease extension was by way of amendment. The lease did not have an extension option. The additional three-year term was related to a rent reduction sought by the Pastor and agreed-to by the landlord. The church performed until it didn’t with eight months to go in the lease’s term. At that time, by agreement with its landlord, the church vacated its premises. [Read more…]
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A restaurant’s lease permitted leasehold mortgages with the following proviso:
We’ve been thinking about artificial intelligence applications and how they might change, even transform, the way we do our business. Then, we heard an interesting story on public radio. It was about a Southern California manufacturer of sex dolls who was introducing models incorporating artificial intelligence. For reasons quite obvious, the story didn’t get very deep into the details, but we learned that these new models were designed to figure out what their owners wanted and to respond appropriately.
It’s been a while since we used these words: “Say What You Mean; Mean What You Say!” Well, we’re back (and, no, this isn’t going to be a dinosaur’s story.) Today, we report on an unremarkable, unpublished January 22, 2018 Order out of a United States District Court in Illinois. That’s what brings us back to those words.
Do you believe in levitation? Can a table really rise on its own, without trickery? Is it possible? Yes. Is it probable? No.
We’ve written about the legal concept of “waiver” too many times to warrant furnishing any links to earlier blog postings. To sum it up succinctly, we’ll start with an example of a pretty familiar provision found in most agreements such as leases and mortgages (to keep us within the real property family). It reads as follows:
It’s not true that oral contracts aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. In fact, for all but some small classes of agreements, oral ones are no different than ones printed on the finest of rag papers. Certainly, they are more difficult to prove their very existence, let alone their detailed provisions. That’s a good reason they should be memorialized in a written version. We’ve written, “memorialized” because, in many cases that’s the real function the writing performs. The parties will have already agreed to the terms of their intended transaction. At that stage, they have a contract – a binding agreement. Writing it down doesn’t make it any more “official,” just a lot easier to follow and a lot easier to explain the “deal” to others, attorneys included.
In a perfect world, wouldn’t everyone’s lease or other agreement comments on behalf of the same party be identical (grammar and spelling aside)? Shouldn’t everyone working on behalf of a tenant, landlord, borrower, lender or the like know exactly what her or his “client” wants to see in the agreement? We suppose so, but a perfect world is still pretty far away. And, it isn’t a lack of knowledge (perfect knowledge?) that would result in different agreements for the same client and circumstances if negotiation were done by different people. There are a lot of factors. One factor is that for a lot of good reasons that sound much like “time and money” each negotiator would have her or his own impression as to what that particular client wants or needs. Another is that, for many parts of an agreement, it doesn’t matter – “six of one; a half dozen of another. But, the one that stands out to Ruminations is that those doing the negotiating will actually be substituting their own judgment for that of the party they represent. 
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