Not Negotiating Renewal Rent Increase Doesn’t Make Landlord Guilty of “Unclean Hands”

What Happened: A shopping center sent an email asking a restaurant tenant to renew its lease at an increased rent. The tenant signed the attached amended lease without reading it. Five years later, it vacated the property and stopped paying rent. The landlord served the tenant with a notice of abandonment and sued for unpaid rent. The tenant, a gentleman from Asia who considered the landlord to be “a person of trust,” claimed he had been taken advantage of. When I signed the renewal, I just assumed it was on the same terms as the original lease, he argued.