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Real Estate Law

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Q: Our company is a tenant in a commercial space and recently received a “notice to cure” from its landlord. The notice claims that we are in violation of certain non-monetary obligations of our lease, which is untrue, and demands that we cure such violations within a certain amount of time. Our landlord has not responded to our attempts to clear this matter up. Should we continue to try to resolve the issue with the landlord or may we simply ignore the notice, since the allegations are incorrect, and wait to see if the landlord takes any further action?

A: This is a common issue that arises in commercial landlord-tenant relations. In fact, it is so common that it has spawned its own subset of legal relief commonly known as a “Yellowstone injunction,” which is named after the seminal case concerning such relief, First Nat. Stores, Inc. v. Yellowstone Shopping Ctr., Inc., 21 N.Y.2d 630, 290 N.Y.S.2d 721 (1968). A notice to cure is not to be taken lightly, and most certainly not ignored. In most standard form commercial leases, the issuance of a notice to cure sets in motion a formal process that, if not timely addressed, can, and most likely will, result in a termination of your commercial lease.

The terms of your lease will often dictate the exact protocol, deadlines, rights and remedies that control this process. Generally speaking, however, a notice to cure will specify a certain amount of time in which the alleged violations must be cured. Depending on the terms of the lease, if the alleged violations are not cured within the stated amount of time, the lease may automatically terminate without further action being required, or the landlord may then take additional steps to terminate the lease, such as sending a notice of termination and/or commencing an eviction proceeding.

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