Owner Loses

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Facts: A lifestyle center comprised of condominiums, retail stores, and restaurants was to be constructed in three phases. A bookstore tenant signed a lease with the lifestyle center's owner for retail space in a building that was not yet completed. Under the lease, the tenant was required to accept the space on the condition that a movie theater, four full-service restaurants, one of which had to be located on “Pad 37” of the property, and at least 50,000 square feet of specialty retailers were open and operating at the time it moved in.

Facts: A sporting goods store tenant at a shopping mall hired a contractor to hang its sign and provided a ladder for him to use while working. The contractor claimed that he had warned the tenant and mall manager that the feet on the ladder were worn out, but was told to “just continue working with it.” The contractor fell off the ladder while hanging the sign, suffering severe injuries.

Facts: A property manager was hired by his father-in-law, the owner of a struggling shopping center, to manage the property. The owner agreed to compensate the property manager at some point in the future, when or if the center became profitable. The property manager agreed, believing that he had a “deferred compensation deal” with the owner.

Facts: An electronics franchise signed a lease with the owner of a retail lifestyle center.

Facts: A customer was injured when he fell on ice in the parking lot of shopping center that consisted of a several businesses in stand-alone buildings, including a national home improvement tenant. The home improvement tenant's lease required the owner and property manager to maintain the common areas of the property, including providing snow and ice removal. Each tenant was required to pay a pro rata share of common area maintenance costs.

Facts: Two tenant employees were trapped and repeatedly bounced up and down uncontrollably for almost an hour and a half in a malfunctioning elevator in the office building where they worked. The office building was owned and managed by a commercial property management company. Both employees needed medical attention, including surgery, for injuries they had suffered from the bouncing. They sued the property management company, claiming that it had negligently maintained the elevator.

Facts: A customer slipped and fell on the lobby floor of a Post Office while trying to mail a letter for his employer, injuring his face and head. The customer claimed that he slipped because the lobby floor was wet due to other customers tracking water into the Post Office during a rainstorm.

Facts: A pedestrian was injured when he fell through a concrete-filled metal grate in a public sidewalk. The grate covered a defunct stairwell to the basement of a building on the property abutting the sidewalk. The stairwell had been reconstructed with the grate by the abutting property's owner in 1968 in accordance with city specifications. Before the reconstruction, it had been installed solely for the abutting owner's convenience.

Facts: A fast-food restaurant had an exclusive right to sell “sandwiches and subs” in a shopping center that consisted of three buildings (Building A, Building B, and Building C). The fast-food restaurant tenant was located in Building A.

Facts: An owner of a Miami, Fla., office building that was still under construction signed a 10-year lease with a tenant under which the tenant would move in 90 days after completion of the building. The lease was signed by one of the owner's employees and the tenant's president and vice president. However, there were no witnesses to any of the signatures. As the building neared completion, the owner repudiated—that is, rejected—the lease because the signatures had not been witnessed.