What Is a Commercial Lease Dispute Worth?
Free during the beta: describe your own facts, or upload your documents, and get a damages range with the reasoning and the cases behind it.
How damages are usually measured
When a commercial tenant breaks a lease, the landlord's claim usually starts with rent that has come due and gone unpaid. Future rent depends on the lease, especially whether it has an acceleration clause, and on the state's rules about mitigation: many states require the landlord to try to re-let and credit the new rent, and the costs of re-letting (commissions, tenant improvements, landlord's work) are often recoverable. Tenants' claims run the other way, for rent abatement or damages when a landlord fails to repair, locks the tenant out without following the required process, or interferes with the tenant's use. A fee-shifting clause can move the result more than any single claim.
General background, not legal advice; the rules vary by state and by the documents in your deal.
What the calculator asks about
These are the facts it pulls from your description or documents for a commercial lease dispute:
- Property state
- Unpaid rent accrued to date
- Does the tenant dispute the debt?
- Is there a written lease?
- Has the lease been terminated / tenant vacated?
- Months remaining on the lease term at termination
- Monthly rent
- Does the lease have an acceleration clause?
- Has the landlord already re-let the space?
- If re-let, new rent received over the overlapping period
How it did on real cases
In CREdocket's published backtest (v4.3), the calculator's range contained the final outcome in 4 of 8 commercial lease dispute cases, and in 17 of 32 cases across all categories. Each case below was run through the live calculator on a verbatim excerpt of the court's statement of facts and each side's contentions, with every sentence stating an award, finding or holding removed, then scored against the final result after any appeal.
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Slyce Coal Fired Pizza Company v. Metropolitan Square Plaza, LLC
Calculator range: $292K – $856K Final outcome: $824K Within the range -
Buyer's Choice Auto Sales, LLC v. Palm Beach Motors, LLC
Calculator range: $0 – $88K Final outcome: $0 Within the range -
1700 Market Street Associates, L.P. v. Common Grounds 1700 Market Street, LLC
Calculator range: $3.11M – $3.24M Final outcome: $223K Outside the range -
Epochal Enterprises, Inc. v. LF Encinitas Properties, LLC
Calculator range: $56K – $400K Final outcome: $222K Within the range -
A commercial tenant v. its landlords
Calculator range: $22K – $39K Final outcome: $19K Outside the range -
Holcomb Dunbar, P.A. v. 400 South Lamar Oxford Mad Hatter Partners, LLC
Calculator range: $16K – $130K Final outcome: $134K Outside the range -
Pryority Partnership v. AMT Properties, LLC
Calculator range: $0 – $193K Final outcome: $193K Within the range -
Donegal Associates v. Christie-Scott, LLC
Calculator range: $3.01M – $5M Final outcome: $-43,305 Outside the range
Full backtest results and method →
Get a range for your own commercial lease dispute
Describe both sides' positions, or upload the lease, loan documents, pleadings or appraisals. The estimate needs both sides' facts; a one-sided complaint alone is not enough to value a case. Sign-in is email only.
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Estimates are probability-weighted ranges from the facts you provide, not a prediction of any court's ruling and not legal advice.