I wrote the very First Edition of Connecticut Landlord and Tenant Law with Forms treatise back in 2008. After seventeen years, including two previous editions, the Fourth Edition has now been published by ALM Law.com and Connecticut Law Tribune.
The treatise covers the legal relationship between landlords and tenants in both the commercial and residential settings. It is designed as a desktop reference, and incorporates seminal case law, legal concepts and principles of landlord-tenant law, and statutory mandates for use by property owners, tenants, and legal practitioners.
While there are a few important common law principles still at play, the bedrock of contemporary Connecticut landlord and tenant law is statutorily based. That means that the rights and obligations of both landlords and tenants – be they residential or commercial – emanate from specific statutes, or a collection of statutes, which must be “narrowly construed and strictly followed” in order to perfect certain legal claims. Under Connecticut law, lease agreements – either commercial or residential – cannot contain provisions that contravene or override landlord-tenant statutes.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Connecticut has seen a significant increase in landlord-tenant appellate decisions and legislative activity—surpassing the volume of such developments in the few years prior. This period also saw a wave of emergency Executive Orders from the Governor, most of which have since been rescinded.
In this Fourth Edition, I have attempted not only to update and incorporate new cases and newly enacted statutes since the Third Edition, but to also provide expanded coverage on some legal principles and concepts which govern landlord-tenant litigation in both civil and eviction proceedings in Connecticut courts. Specifically, the Fourth Edition of the Connecticut Landlord and Tenant Law with Forms treatise includes the following new and expanded topics:
- Updated case law and statutes pertaining to default triggers and defenses in commercial and residential lease disputes;
- Criminal Lockout as applied in both the residential and commercial context;
- Liability criteria for CUTPA violations in failing to timely return security deposits;
- Mobile Manufactured Home Park Statutory Notices for Summary Process Actions;
- FairRent Commission Actions;
- Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Notice Requirements for Residential Evictions;
- Right to Counsel Notifications (new residential statutory requirements);
- Summary Process under the Common Interest Ownership (CONDO) Act;
- An Updated and Expanded Glossary of Landlord-Tenant Terminologies and Concepts generally applicable to commercial landlord-tenant disputes.
One of the expanded sections in the Fourth Edition is an analysis of the Connecticut Supreme Court’s decision in AGW Sono Partners, LLC v. Downtown Soho, LLC, which is particularly instructive to commercial landlords and tenants because: (1) that decision not only clarified the legal standards for the defenses of impossibility and impracticability of performance, and of frustration of purpose as related to force majeure events but (2) further clarified a central issue in Connecticut landlord-tenant law regarding which party bears the burden of proving that a landlord failed to mitigate its damages after the landlord sues the tenant for breach of lease.
Under Connecticut law, a tenant will not prevail in asserting impossibility, impracticability, or frustration of purpose as defenses to a breach of lease action if the lease had explicitly assigned a particular risk to one party in anticipation of a force majeure event, regardless of the magnitude of the force majeure event (i.e., COVID-19 governmental shutdowns).
As to which party bears the burden of proving whether the landlord reasonably mitigated its damages, the law in Connecticut is now crystal clear: while a landlord is still obligated to mitigate its damages after a lease is terminated, the tenant nonetheless bears the burden of proving that the landlord failed to take the necessary steps to fully mitigate its damages. The practical effect of this decision is that it now makes it harder for a tenant to cast doubt on the landlord’s mitigation efforts because the burden will then shift to the tenant (not the landlord) to affirmatively establish by a preponderance of evidence that the landlord did not reasonably mitigate its damages.
Connecticut landlord-tenant law is constantly changing. The topics covered in the Fourth Edition are intended to provide updated guidance to practitioners in their prosecution and defense of landlord-tenant disputes.
