We wanted to a “hit and run” this week based on what we think is a peculiar and wrong court decision about language in a personal guaranty. Then, we came across a second court decision concerning a guaranty, though with no other connection to the “peculiar” one. Given that electrons are plentiful and essentially free, we’ve chosen to tell readers about the later-discovered one first.

The story begins with a 15-year lease that was assigned by the named tenant to a successor only five months after the lease terms started. In connection with that assignment, a guaranty was given to the landlord, one in which the guarantor guaranteed:

[T]he payment and performance by the [a]ssignee of all its obligations under the [l]ease and all of the obligations of the [t]enant as defined under the [l]ease effective as of the date hereof.

The awkwardness of that text is immaterial to what then happened. About 2-1/2 years later, the lease was further assigned. In connection with this second assignment, the guarantor, in a writing dated about a month later, “confirmed that its guarantee would remain in effect despite [this] assignment….” Then, about eight years after that, the shares of the then tenant were acquired by yet another “tenant,” actually the same one, but with a new shareholder. The parent company of the new shareholder guaranteed the tenant’s lease obligations, the landlord waived its right to cancel the lease by reason of the shareholder change, and, importantly, the landlord received another letter from the original, lease-signing tenant. That letter confirmed the ongoing validity of the original guaranty, using the following language: [Read more…]