NYLJ Article: Does a Landlord Have A Duty to Mitigate?

According to Sateesh Nori the answer in New York is "No, but maybe."  The article begins:

A lease is both a contract between parties—the landlord and the tenant—and an interest in land. However, this duality has created conflict in determining whether a landlord has a duty to mitigate damages in the event of a tenant's early termination of a lease. The rule that a landlord has a duty to mitigate derives from basic principles of contract law. The doctrine that the landlord has no duty to mitigate, which views a lease not as a contract but as an interest in land, was seemingly mandated by the Appellate Division, Second Department, in Rios v. Carrillo in 2008. Now, four years later, uncertainty still abounds as courts waver in applying contract principles to lease breaches and carve exceptions into the rule that a landlord has no duty to mitigate. This article attempts to identify the factors relied upon by courts where a duty to mitigate has been applied in contravention of established case law.

Worth a read.

[Meredith R. Miller]