Brown v. Green

Opinion

ARABIAN, J.

—We granted review to consider the effect of the developing public awareness of environmentally hazardous building materials, and the often substantial cost of their abatement, on traditional rules allocating, as between lessor and lessee, the duty to make repairs and alterations to the leasehold required to comply with laws affecting commercial property. We conclude that settled and well-understood legal rules for determining which party has assumed the burdens of compliance and repair continue to yield fair and reasonable results when applied to leases of nonresidential…