Landlord and Tenant Law

Our representation of, and close work with, landlords and property management companies for over 20 years in the highly regulated health care industry has given us vast experience strictly enforcing leases and collecting all amounts owed.

Advising and Drafting

Our firm provides a wide array of assistance in commercial landlord-tenant matters including negotiating, preparing, and enforcing leases and guaranties.  We are regularly called upon to review and provide advice regarding leases, addendums, modifications, and notices in compliance with state law. We likewise routinely draft leases, guaranties, assignments, subleases, and enforceable rent acceleration clauses.  Our experience in the field enables our attorneys to look beyond the legal issues facing our clients in order to also counsel our clients on the business issues confronting them. We partner with our clients for the long term as they meet the challenges of an ever changing and increasingly competitive real estate market.

Enforcement and Litigation

We vigorously enforce leases and guaranties, including accelerating rent and collecting it from tenants and guarantors.  After we file an action to collect rent, we typically seek a quick resolution through a motion for default judgment or motion for summary judgment.  When we are unable to resolve a case through negotiation or a dispositive motion, we push the case to trial, handle any appeals, and enforce the judgment through filing judgment liens, supplemental proceedings, garnishments of accounts and wages (as appropriate), and levies and executions on property interests.

In cases where tenants fail to pay rent or holdover, our clients often draw on our extensive experience in terminating tenants’ possession and/or leases, filing dispossessory actions and evicting tenants.  We are also sometimes called upon to enforce a landlord’s lien against the tenant’s property in the premises through a distraint action, which typically involves storing and cataloguing the tenant’s property, coordinating an auction of the property, and properly distributing the auction proceeds.

We continue our representation of the landlord in cases where the tenant files bankruptcy, and seek to obtain possession of the premises and/or to maximize the landlord’s recovery.  This is often accomplished by focusing our collection efforts on the guarantor(s) instead of the tenant.