Treat Month-to-Month Tenant as if Under Lease

An owner claimed that a tenant failed to pay rent and other charges in its lease when due and additionally owed holdover rent for the third and fourth years of the tenancy. According to the owner, the tenant owed it more than $3.1 million.

The tenant alleged that the owner was unjustly enriched by the tenant's expenditures—including monies expended for landscaping, water, and garbage collection.

Even if the holdover tenant failed to pay rent for its space, the owner still had to credit it for other expenditures it made during the holdover tenancy, stated the court. Because a holdover tenant's month-to-month tenancy is governed by the same terms and conditions as its original lease, the tenant should have been credited for any types of payments it would have been credited for under its lease.

• Arraid Property, L.L.C. v. Alanco Technologies, April 2009