Retail Eviction by Landlord

[lizjimbo]

What is the name of your state? Virginia

My wife and I have a commercial lease for use as a pet store. We are 3.5 years in to a 5 year lease. We have an option to renew for 5 more years. Our current rate $8.00 p/ft and will not rise above $10.00 p/ft for the length of the option. The going minmum rate for retail space is $25.00 p/ft.

A neighboring business failed, one adjacent our store. The reasons for his failure were poor business practice and poor product. He was a City Dollar store and only sold cheap junk, most of which was no use to anyone. He had to shut the doors after 6 months because his sales were practically non-existant. He had a 3 year lease. He was able to break the lease by telling the landlord "offensive odors" from our store caused his business failure. The facts are that we have plenty of testimony from customers of his shop as well as other tenants, including an adjacent tenant, that our store causes no one any problem and that no odors were ever detected in his store. Is this defamation?

Is the landlord harrassing us and are there recoverable damages. Can we recover from the owner of City Dollar? We are paying near $4,000.00 to a lawyer to protect our rights and interests in this eviction attempt.

Thanks for your thoughts.
Jim

 

[stephenk]

what did your lawyer tell you when you asked him/her?

 

[lizjimbo]

What Lawyer knows

Our attorney said there may be reason to recover damages. The problem we may have is proving actual malicious intent on anyones part. The big problem with defamation is using "the my opinion defense is it stunk". I can prove by direct testimony there were no odors in his store. The shop owner never complained and we were on very friendly terms. They patronized our store and we patronized their store. We recieved a default of lease letter 2 weeks before thte shop closed doors. He did not move to a new location, he sold off the entire inventory. The stuff he sold was so useless that even at 50 cents per piece he couldn't sell it to the public. He was finally made an offer for everything.

I discovered that he was paying nearly $15.00 per foot for his lease. Several other businesses are at that level. Our lease is just over $7.00 per/ft. It is my opinion the landlord may have suggested to him that he needed to discover a smelly odor coming from our store. That would be the only way out.

The landlord is a notorious bully. He doesn't like the fact that he cannot push us around. We do business the Chicago way. That is, rhetorically of course, he brings a knife and we bring a gun.

What would be a fair buy out value of our lease, percentage of lease. We belive he wants the space back in order to lease it at a higher rate.

Thanks for your input.

Jim