What Happened: A strip mall landlord gave a Brazilian steakhouse tenant verbal permission to keep a storage trailer on its nearby property without charge on the understanding that the tenant would remove the trailer if and when the landlord instructed. Five years later, the parties signed a new five-year lease requiring the tenant to comply with “any other agreement” with the landlord “relating to the premises,” and banning it from storing restaurant equipment and materials outside the premises. 

A few months into the new agreement, the landlord told the tenant to move the trailer. The tenant refused. A year and several repeated requests later, the landlord sued to evict the tenant for failing to move the trailer, keeping restaurant equipment in common areas outside the premises, and other lease violations. The trial court ruled that the tenant materially breached the lease.

Ruling: The Massachusetts court rejected the tenant’s appeal. 

Reasoning: The evidence supported the trial court’s finding that the tenant’s failure to move the trailer was “neither insignificant nor accidental” and constituted a material default under the lease. The same was true of the tenant’s storing a buffet station, portable heaters, and other equipment outside the premises without the landlord’s permission. The landlord considered the no outside storage ban a key provision, the court reasoned, noting that it imposed the same restriction on all tenants “who were operating businesses in close proximity to each other and sharing common areas.” 

• Gagne Realty Corp. v. BBG Souza Enterprises, Inc., 2024 Mass. App. Unpub. LEXIS 700, 105 Mass. App. Ct. 1101