Tenant's Rights, Responsibilities, and Remedies in Yearly Lease and Easement Analysis, Exams of Property Law

Download Tenant's Rights, Responsibilities, and Remedies in Yearly Lease and Easement Analysis and more Exams Property Law in PDF only on Docsity! ID: Exam Name: Prop1_LS3_(Stanley)_Final_F08 Instructor: Kim Stanley Grade: ____________ 1) Question 1 When considering what Tenant's legal rights, responsibilities and remedies are, we must first discuss his lease. Tenant was originally in a term lease for 2 years. When Tenant stayed passed the expiration date, and LL continued to accept his rent checks (section 7) he accepted his continued leasehold as a year-to-year lease because the original lease was for an annual rent. As with any tenant, Tenant has three duties (1) to pay rent, (2) to prevent waste, and (3) to not use the premises for illegal activity. One of Tenant's problems arises from the duty to pay rent. As T found out upon his return from vacation, Fingers, had stopped paying rent on his behalf. T owes LL 3 months of rent. T may argue that the lease should be terminated because of the destruction from the hurricane (section 5). However, the only damage to the premises was the window, which was easily fixed. He may further argue that because he did not have power or phones, and that sanitation, police, fire and health servces were down for 3 months, that he should not have to pay those months of rent. Although those things are out of the LL's control, it is one of the LL's duties to provide and maintain a habitable premises and being w/o electricity and sanitation certainly is not habitable. T may not have to pay rent for those months that he could not have used the business. T may try to argue that LL breached his duty of interfering with T's quiet enjoyment by causing his constructive eviction, however, the uninhabitibility must be the result of something the LL did or did not do, which it is not, and the T must have vacated the premises, which he did not. Therefore, that would not be a remedy that T could use. LL would argue that T has many responibilities within the shop when it comes to prevention of waste. There are three types of waste: (1) voluntary waste, (2) ameliorated waste, and (3) permissive waste. In our case the waste was neither voluntary, where the T did something intentionally to casue damage, nor ameliorated, where the T changes the premises in a way that changes the nature of the property. In this case the waste was permissive. In leaving someone else in control of the property, and not keeping tabs on what was happening there, all of the extra damage that resulted after Fingers left would be the responsibility of the T. Had appropriate measures been taken in the beginning, the stolen fixtures and other damage could have been prevented. As a result of T not using ordinary care, according to section 11, T is responsible for all of the repairs needed in the shop. T would argue that Fingers is responsible for the damage. In our case, where a tenant has taken on a sublessee, T must still answer to LL because he is the only one with privity of contract and privity of estate with LL. Fingers has privity of contract with T. This means that violation of covenants in the contract between T and Fingers would be a remedy that T could persue. Fingers has not paid rent to him either, therefore, T would have grounds to terminate that sublease and sue for the unpaid rent, as well as the damages that resulted from Fingers not using ordinary care. Should T want to terminate the lease as soon as possible, the best he could do is to give proper notice to LL for termination of the lease on March 31, 2010. It is too late to terminate for the end of the current lease period. For a year-to-year tenancy, notice needs to be given 6 months before the end of the current lease period, and this period ends on March 31, 2009, only 4 months from our November meeting. T is stuck in this arrangement for a long time, so he should buckle down and start making repairs so that he can reopen the shop and make the money he will be spending on the repairs. Question 2 In deciding this case, first we must determine if Old E's use of the driveway constituted an easement. An easement can be created in several different ways, (1) by express contract or reservation, (2) by implication be necessity, (3) by estoppel, (4) by implication by prior use, or (5) by prescription. In our case, there was no agreement between the parties that Old E could use the driveway to get from parcel A to the open space to ride his horse, therefore, there is no express easement. For an implied easement by necessity, there would need to be strict necessity for ingress and egress and the necessity would have to have been created by the severance. Our facts do not support these requirements, therefore there is not an implied easement by necessity. In order for there to be an easement by etoppel, there would have had to have been an agreement for use in the first place that Old E was relying on and changing his position in reliance of. That did not happen, so there is no easement by estoppel. In order to have an implied easement by prior use, there must be a severance of land, prior use of the tract of land before the severance, and some necessity (majority rule says reasonable necessity, minority rule says strict necessity) for the easement. In our case there appears to have been a prior use of that ridge, by Old E to get to the open space. Our facts are unclear as to how necessary it was him to use that route, but under the majority rule, a reasonable necessity is all that's required. There may possibly by an