David Morgan of Envoy Capital Realty, Inc. in Canada recently sent to me a form lease that some tenant's and landlord's use because the feel that it is fair and impartial. It is a two page lease that says little more than here is the location, this is the term and the is how much the tenant pays. Not very complicated, but not very calculated to deal with the likely issues that typically arise in a commercial lease. Sorry folks, life is just not that simple. My goodness, I wonder how many lawsuits are borne out of that document.
This lease reminds me of a 3 page landlord lease that I had to review in 1987, but more on that later. Tenant and landlord's willingness to sign almost anything that is put in front of them also reminds me of the time that I reviewed a lease for a tenant/client in 1985. This was just about before Wordperfect and you could redline a lease direclty in the document. In any event, I made a copy of the lease, marked it up and then wrote about 30 pages of comments pointing out the changes that I was recommending and why I was recommending the changes. Some of my comments were explaining how the tenant would benefit from my changes, to the detriment of the landlord.
About 6 months later, I became the Director of Real Estate and General Counsel for the client. The first thing I wanted to do was to organize all of the leases. While organizing the leases, I came upon a copy of the lease that I had previously commented upon. Note, I never heard back from the client regarding my comments and didn't know if the lease had been signed until I had gone in house. Upon review of the lease and much to my shock, I discovered that both my client and the landlord had signed the lease and added, as an addendum, my 30 page document, comments and all. Obviously no one, including my client, ever looked at the document and the fact that I had not created an addendum, but was merely commenting and looking inform the client so it could make the most informed decision.
Thank goodness we never litigated that lease. I am not sure how I would argue what the terms were when the addendum contained language, such as "change article 10, on page 6, 3rd paragraph from the bottom of the page, 2nd line from the top of the paragraph, after the word "and" with the words:
10 days calendar notice, in writing after default. Note - I don't trust this landlord who has a bad reputation and I want to make it as difficult as possible for him to evict you in the even of default".
Recent Comments