Office-Space-Disputes-One

All too often when there is a dispute between a landlord and a tenant over a matter relating to a
tenant's office space the first port of call for the tenant is to contact their solicitor to handle the
dispute for them and to provide legal advice. From our experience that can be an expensive and
confrontational manner in which to resolve a dispute over office space disputes.

While inevitably the terms of the lease for your office space are an important consideration and
often determines the outcome of a dispute between you and the landlord, sometimes with a bit
of careful thought and a focus on creative thinking you can resolve a problem in a win/win
situation for both the landlord and the tenant. In a retail context we experienced the following:

Dispute: We recently had a dispute with a tenant regarding some critical building works we
needed to undertake on our office building. The tenant claimed that we had unfairly disrupted
their retail food business. The tenant sought the advice of a lawyer who claimed hundreds of
thousands of dollars in damages.

Solution: Rather than hire a solicitor, we hired a retail food consultant to help us figure out a
way to increase the tenants business, avoid costly litigation and ultimately it has proven to
significantly improve the relationship between the tenant and us.

Some of the major considerations to take into account when it comes to resolving a dispute
regarding your office space are issues like:

The amount of money in contention;

The importance of the issue to your business;

What financial harm has been caused to your business;

The seriousness of any perceived breach;

The ramifications to your business should the dispute escalate into full blown litigation. The
cost of resolving a dispute in a litigated manner is a very expensive option and this is a potential
cost to both you and the landlord;