Ordinary Wear and Tear ≠ Grounds for Eviction

What Happened: After doing an inspection, the landlord tried to evict the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) for violating its lease obligation to keep the premises in good repair, citing among other things:

• Moss, birds, and bird droppings on the roof;
• Safety netting installed under the ceilings;
• Erosion of epoxy coating on the floors allowing water to leak in; and
• Concrete deterioration of the ramp.

USPS denied violating the lease and insisted the damage was just ordinary wear and tear.

Decision: The Wisconsin court agreed and tossed the landlord’s eviction case.

Reasoning: This wasn’t a situation where a tenant was vacating at the end of the term; the lease was still running, and the landlord wanted to end it. In this context, the landlord’s interpretation of the duty to keep the property in good repair as requiring USPS to keep the place in an ideal condition without ordinary wear and tear so that the landlord could lease it to another tenant on similar terms was unreasonable. All USPS had to do was keep it in good repair for the use contemplated by the lease, reasoned the court. And because the damages didn’t interfere with using the property as a postal facility, the landlord had no case to evict.

• 345 Prop. Owner, LLC v. United States Postal Serv., 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 175318, 2019 WL 5068819