Landlord Goes After Tenant for Decades-Old Lease Violation

What Happened: Eight years after moving in, a grocery store tenant renewed its lease in 2003 and wound up staying another 12 years. But as with all long-term relationships, there were disagreements. Issues in this tenancy that had lain dormant for 20 years surfaced just five days before the lease was due to expire when the landlord sued the tenant for failing to make its required tax payments. The key question: Had the statute of limitations expired by then? The jury didn’t think so and awarded the landlord $38,558 in damages.

Ruling: The Pennsylvania court upheld the verdict but cut it to $19,523.

Reasoning: The statute of limitations for lease claims in Pennsylvania is four years. The landlord filed his lawsuit in June 2015 when there were only five days left on the lease. As a result, the court said he could go after the tenant for unpaid taxes over a four-year “lookback” period starting in 2011. Although the landlord was probably disappointed in not being able to recover nonpayment over the full course of the lease, his consolation is that the court rejected the tenant’s argument that the statute of limitations actually ran out in 2007, four years after the latest version of the lease had been signed. “We do not think the Legislature intended for long-term tenants to occupy premises rent-free when a landlord waits more than four years into a decade-long lease to sue,” the court reasoned.

• Tsung Tsin Ass'n v. Luen Fong Produce, Inc., 2019 Pa. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 1301, 2019 WL 1531884 (April 2019)