Altered Commercial Lease (maryland)

Location: Maryland

Tenant defended two prior eviction attempts on their business. The first Holdover Tenant claim was dismissed in their favor as the landlord introduced the 5 year lease into evidence. The second was dismissed without prejudice due to landlords attorney adding other contract claims to the Breach of Lease claim. Judge advised plaintiffs to file the correct Failure to Pay Rent claim.

Tenant received 3 new notices of pending claims. A Failure to Pay Rent and two Breach of Lease claims with different notification requirements. One is 14 and the other is 30 days. None have been filed yet but two are eligible.

A few days ago tenant discovered the lease submitted during the first holdover case had two pages inserted at the end. These pages were of photos and marked as “attachments”. They were referenced on the lease as attachments of the “Acceptance of Premises” and are vital to the issues between parties. (iTenant had no working heat or ac in the space and serious code violations ).

The lease was signed digitally (Docuserve) and these documents were not present, there are no signature blocks like on the rest of the pages. Additionally upon review of the email correspondence between realtor/partner and tenant, the realtor admits after the documents were signed that she would “ Stop by to take pictures of the issues discussed to add to tenants ‘file’.

Additionally, the realtor never disclosed her representation to the tenant in writing as required in Maryland.

What do you all think? Should tenant set a trap and let opposing counsel to file the next three actions? Or reopen the old cases? The 14 day breach of lease claim is based on a false accusation that the tenant threw a countertop commercial beverage refrigerator“across the shop” at landlord and pointed his fingers in her face. No police report was filed for the alleged assault and tenants security cameras had already expired the video as the accusation was months old.

One more detail. 3 of the partners of the plaintiff and at least 7 different corporate entities owned or controlled by plaintiffs have contributed to the tenants problem. The town lawyer of the tenant is opposing counsel and at least one elected councilman is or was an investor at the time and he was deeply involved in the lack of heat and ac issue and was brought in twice to look at it to repair, but never started it.