localthreads951
Dec 3, 2008, 08:44 PM
I signed a five year lease April 08. On August 27th 2008, my neighbors building caught fire. The fire took my building as well. Both my neighbor and I have the same land lord. I had insurance, as required by law, my neighbor did not. Sadly, he "forgot" to renew his policy and the landlord never asked for the renewal papers. The damage the fire caused to both buildings is an est. $1 million. The day of the fire we expressed our concern that our business MUST be back and operating by thanksgiving, in time for the holiday season. He promised that he could do that and that timeframe wouldn't be a problem. It is now almost 4 months later and the building doesn't even have building permits yet. As we speak they are still demo'ing all of the burnt roof. We have requested our large deposit back so my family can restart our business elsewhere. We can not wait anylonger and are losing our customers to competition. The landlord is refusing to return our deposit and saying that we signed a lease and that lease is still in effect? The building will not be completed until approx. April '09. Our question is when is a lease void? And how can we still have a lease when he doesn't have a building? What are our rights? How do we get our large deposit back?
Thank you
Thank you