Contract Between the Friendly Dawg and Landlord Lou
A legally binding agreement between two parties is spelt down in the form of rules or expectations. If one of the parties to a contract fails to uphold their end of the bargain, they may be liable for damages under the contract’s breach of duty clause (Mik, 2019). A valid contract requires four things: an agreement, a consideration, a contractual capability, and legal object (Mik, 2019). In this case, Lou offers a business suite to Dave at The Friendly Dawg, a pet supply store, for $500 per month. Dave’s father and Lou’s written agreement meets the legal definition of contractual capacity since it was drafted. At the same time, both were fully capable of entering into legally binding contracts and were free from undue influence.
Since Dave is now in charge of the company and its contracts, he will be allowed to continue to use this agreement. Since Dave did not amend the initial contract with Lou to reflect the expanded nature of the business, which now includes the sale of live pets and pet supplies, the earlier agreement is void and unenforceable. Dave has breached the conditions of his lease by using the facility for purposes other than selling pet supplies and pet food, so he cannot legally sell live animals there without Landlord Lou’s consent.
When Dave stopped paying his rent, he stopped fulfilling his contractual responsibility. Dave might quit paying rent if he claims that Lou never told him he could not keep live animals in the building when he notified Lou, he would be expanding inventory. Lou refused to replace the air conditioning in the room where his live animals were held in the back of the property. Dave should put the rented facility to use for the purpose stated in the lease agreement: to sell pet supplies and food. While Lou may be tempted to cancel the lease and evict Dave and the Friendly Dawg for their repeated contract violations, he may instead choose to resolve it with Dave to keep the lease in effect.
Contract Between Sunshine Yoga and Landlord Lou
Lou and Jasmine did indeed have a verbal contract, and they have all four elements of a contract in place. According to this agreement, Lou would provide studio space for Jasmine forever in exchange for Jasmine paying $300 per month in rent, and he would never evict her. It is stated that they met in a bar; however, it does not state that either one of them was intoxicated at the time of their encounter. However, a valid contract would not be able to exist between Jasmine and landlord Lou because the agreement is not in the correct written form, falling under the statutes of fraud requiring it to be written (Mik, 2019). However, Jasmine can argue that although the contract was never written down, Lou allowed her to rent that space for two years without worrying about a legally binding contract.
Given that no written form of the contract exists beyond the parties’ oral agreement, Lou has the right to assert that the agreement they reached was invalid. However, if he is correct and the contract is invalid, he cannot demand any more than the $300 rent already paid by Jasmine (Mik, 2019). Since Lou did not correctly handle the situation with Dave, Jasmine may be entitled to compensation for her medical bills and any lost income due to the disruption to her business (Mik, 2019). Since Lou allowed the animals of his neighboring tenant, The Friendly Dawg, to be a nuisance and excessively loud, Jasmine can claim that Lou breached their oral contract by failing to provide Sunshine Yoga studio with a quiet and safe place for her to perform her business (Mik, 2019). Lou allowed noisy and potentially dangerous live animals to occupy adjacent units without informing the occupants of those units.
Grounds to Evict
There is a legal basis for Lou to evict Sunshine Yoga because the contract between Jasmine and Lou is not enforceable since it was only a verbal agreement and never showed any signs of existing in written form. This is done through the statute of fraud because the contract will not be carried out within the year, meaning it needs to be written (Mik, 2019). It is also possible for Lou to evict Dave of The Friendly Dawg because he had failed to pay the rent, a requirement of the contract that Dave signed when he took the job. Even though Lou refused to fix the air conditioning, this particular unit section was not a common area. As a result, it is not considered part of the required routine maintenance that Lou is obligated to renovate as part of his contract. According to the method of eviction known as “sue to evict,” Lou would most likely have to file a lawsuit against one of the tenants to get them to vacate the property and have the courts enforce an eviction order.