May 17, 2013 – In the May 13, 2013 edition of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, Krokidas & Bluestein partner Vincent Pisegna discusses the impact of the landmark Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling in the case of 275 Washington Street Corp. v. Hudson River International LLC. In Hudson River, the SJC held, among other things, that a commercial landlord must wait until the end of the lease term to recover sums due for the balance of the term after its commercial tenant defaults, unless the lease contains a specific provision for the earlier payment of such sums. The court reasoned that the precise amount of post-termination losses cannot be ascertained until the end of the period specified in the lease, and that although the landlord could have negotiated a provision which protected its long term interest, it chose not to do so. The Lawyers Weekly article quotes Attorney Pisegna in stating that the Hudson River case “highlights the importance of incorporating a clear provision [in a lease] that explicitly lays out a landlord’s remedies in the event of a default”. Mr. Pisegna is also quoted as observing that language used by the SJC in the opinion will allow lawyers in the future “to cite this one for the proposition that a lease should be interpreted as a contract”.
To find out more on this topic, visit Krokidas & Bluestein’s Litigators’ Blog co-authored by Attorneys Vincent Pisegna and Anthony Cichello. The most recent Blog entitled, Commercial Landlord Must Wait For Damages Unless Lease Contains Sufficiently Specific Language, posted on May 17, 2013, which discusses the Hudson River case in more detail, can be found at: www.kb-law.com/blog.
