Cummings Properties, LLC v. National Communications Corp.

This is a summary process action to evict a commercial lessee for nonpayment of rent. The legal issue on appeal centers on the damages awarded because the lessee challenges the trial court’s enforcement of the lease’s accelerated rent provision. That issue was preserved for appeal by the lessee’s request for rulings of law that it was “not legally obligated to pay the plaintiff any accelerated rent under the terms of the lease between the parties” and that “[t]he rent acceleration clause ... is unenforceable because the damages thereunder are a penalty and ‘grossly disproportionate to the…