Leaky Roof Makes “Four Seasons” True to Its Name.

In any new iteration the clothing store at issue in Landmark HHH, L.L.C. v. Gi Hwa Park, 277 Va. 50, 671 S.E.2d 143 (2009), may want to change its name to “Really Dry Place Where Inventory is Safe,” or the like.

In Landmark, a commercial tenant operated a men’s clothing store unfortunately named the “Four Seasons.” The tenant complained about the leaky roof, and the landlord decided to replace the entire roof of the shopping center. The landlord hired the badly-named Waterproofing Consulting Company (should have been the “Guaranteed Water-Damaged Inventory Consulting Company”) to design the roof replacement and hired a contractor to do the work. After completion, the roof still leaked, and the contractor made some minor repairs.

On the morning of June 26, 2006, though, after the Northern Virginia area received record rainfall, the tenant opened her store to discover the entire ceiling had collapsed, and her inventory had sustained substantial water damage. After attempting to salvage her business, the tenant closed the store within months, and the tenant sued the landlord for failing to keep the roof in good repair. The landlord said it had no prior notice of the defective roof and was not liable under the lease.

The court held the landlord’s construction of the lease was too narrow in that its requiring the landlord to “make such repairs [to the roof] as are necessary following [the landlord’s] knowledge of the necessity of said repairs” did not mean that repairs had to be made only upon being given notice that the roof was defective. Also, the court held that the replacement of the roof did not fulfill the duty to keep the roof in good repair because the landlord was obligated to have the new roof in such a condition at installation. 671 S.E.2d at 146.

Finally, the court held that the provisions requiring the tenant to have insurance and absolving the landlord of liability to the extent of the tenant’s insurance coverage did not limit the tenant’s ability to sue, as this provision only prohibited the tenant’s double recovery.

Oh, Yeah, Ma, I Need a Ride Tomorrow to a Shoplifting.

In Finney v. Commonwealth, 277 Va. 83, 671 S.E.2d 169 (2009), the defendant’s mother was still chauffeuring her adult son around, albeit to and from a crime scene. In Finney, a witness saw the defendant walking down the street carrying power tools. The witness called his neighbor, who was moving to a rural house in stages, to tell him to check on his storage shed. The neighbor saw that pieces of his backyard fence had been removed, the doorjamb to his storage shed had been “ripped apart,” and a window of the shed had been left open. Inside, it was clear that his tools had been stolen. The neighbor and the witness then decided to stake out the property in case the defendant returned.

The two men observed the defendant’s mother driving her truck, with the defendant in the passenger seat. The mother drove around the block twice before stopping by the neighbor’s property. The defendant exited the truck, went through the opening in the fence and then entered the shed. The witness and the neighbor approached the defendant, who rapidly returned to his mom’s truck. As he did, he shouted that he did not steal any of the property but he knew who did. The defendant repeated this statement to the police officer who later arrested him and told the officer he had been on the property looking for a man named “Red.”

Besides the fact that the defendant’s mother was the driver in this alleged crime spree, what stands out about this case is that the defendant’s conviction for burglary under Va. Code Ann. § 18.2-90 was reversed on appeal.

A “breaking” in a “burglary” can be as slight as opening a door or turning a key. The evidence here, though, showed only that the defendant had walked through an opening in the fence and entered the shed through the “ripped apart” door jamb. There was no evidence that the defendant had applied any force to any part of the structure to gain entry. So, the court held that he was not guilty of burglary, 671 S.E.2d at 173-74, but mom apparently was a bad parent, or, at least, an enabler.