Renter/Landlord Responsiblities in a Commerical Property

By Stressed

We’ve owned a restaurant inside of a business building for years and in the last couple of years, the ventilation and fire suppression systems have not been working properly. Each year, when the food inspection division evaluates our premise, they note that we are in violation due to these systems not working properly and each year, we have asked the landlord to correct this issue. They never have. This year, the inspection division shut down all operations of oven and fryers because the ventilation and fire suppression system issues. This is forcing our restaurant to shut down permanently and now that we are notifying the landlord that we are closing the restaurant at the end of the month (we’ve been on a month to month lease), they are telling us that we have to pay to fix the ventilation and fire suppression systems before we vacate because they were in working order when we arrived.

My assumption was that all fixed properties within the building are the landlord’s responsibilities (these systems are fixed to the ceiling and walls). I already feel that the landlord has been in violation for not addressing these issues for us for years- but now they are telling us to pay to have these systems fixed when they have forced our restaurant to close our doors. Is that allowed???

Any advise would be greatly appreciated. We just feel that we don’t know the laws and are being taken advantage of.

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Holy Cow, we couldn't find any other related post. Sorry. :(