KMWB Successfully Defends Tenant’s $4,000,000 Renovations with Injunction and Summary Judgment and Attorneys’ Fees

KMWB represented a commercial tenant who entered into a net lease for a 58,000 square foot vacant warehouse that was a former paper mill factory. Our client executed the Lease when the Building was virtually a shell and set about to undertake a wholesale conversion whereby the client gut-renovated the four-story building and created 35 commercial office units targeting the technology, advertising, media, and information and creative office tenants increasingly looking to Brooklyn for their workspace. The gut renovation of the brick-and-timber property was in excess of four million dollars ($4,000,000). The landlord was engaged in a concerted effort to do anything and everything to prematurely recover possession of a premises and alleged various breaches of the leases including, but not limited to, various defaults under the insurance, fire, health and maintenance provisions of the lease. The Landlord served our client with a notice to cure. KMWB not only moved for an injunction but additionally took the added step of moving for summary judgment and attorneys’ fees. The trial court wholly ruled in our client’s favor including the award of attorneys’ fees. Landlord appealed and Tenant defended the trial court’s decision. The Appellate Division of the Second Department wholly affirmed the trial court’s decision wholly siding with the arguments made by KMWB on the appeal and entered a declaration that the tenant did not breach the lease and/or cured any such breach during the injunctive period.