Commercial leases are being broken more and more often since the market turned.  Our office has helped these tenants to mitigate their losses and help them terminate their commercial lease with tact.  Believe it or not, you do have options, and it is better to negotiate than to get a money judgment that may be collected against your business assets.

Even though you are breaking a contractual agreement, your landlord still has the obligation to mitigate their losses.  In other words, they must make reasonable and good faith attempts to find a tenant replacement.  This is a basic common law rule extracted from a basic concept that if a person is injured, it is expected they will make attempts to heal themselves.  If they do not, a defendant can not justly be held liable for damages beyond what could have been easily avoided.  Therefore, California law provides that a landlord cannot collect rent from a prior tenant for rent that they are currently collecting.  In fact, if the landlord charges an even higher rent to the next tenant, the former tenant is entitled to an offset.

Another thing to remember is that there is no additional damages beyond what would be considered the amount of money the landlord would have collected had the tenant continued to pay on the lease.