## Facts

- Net Realty Holding Trust (landlord) leased space in an enclosed shopping center (the Meriden Mall) to Clinton Nelson and others (tenants) for a two-year term beginning January 15, 1975.
- The tenants operated an indoor miniature golf course in the leased space.
- The course was visible from mall corridors, attracting mall patrons and other people who entered the leased area even when they were not playing.
- These noncustomers repeatedly loitered on the premises, sometimes in groups and sometimes in a loud or disruptive manner.
- When the loiterers became a problem, the tenants contacted mall security; the security guard would disperse the group, but the loiterers later returned.
- The tenants attributed at least two incidents to these intrusions: an altercation involving an employee and the theft of the tenants’ cash box.
- The tenants concluded that the repeated presence of trespassers made the business no longer profitable and abandoned the premises in mid-February 1975, about one month into the lease term.
- The landlord sued to recover unpaid rent for the remainder of the lease term.
- The tenants defended by claiming the landlord violated the covenant of quiet enjoyment and that the conditions amounted to a constructive eviction, excusing further rent.

## Issues

1. Whether recurring trespassers and loitering in a shopping-center setting, and the landlord’s alleged failure to prevent their return, breached the covenant of quiet enjoyment.
2. Whether those third-party disturbances constituted a constructive eviction that relieved the tenants of liability for rent after they abandoned the premises.

## Decision

- The court held the landlord did not breach the covenant of quiet enjoyment.
- The court held the tenants were not constructively evicted.
- The tenants’ abandonment was unjustified, and the landlord was entitled to recover rent owed under the lease for the remainder of the term.

## Legal Principles

- A covenant of quiet enjoyment is generally broken only by actual or legal disturbance of possession arising from a paramount title or right, not by ordinary interference from strangers.
- Constructive eviction occurs only when the landlord, without physically expelling the tenant, does or allows something that renders the premises untenantable.
- Disturbance or entry by a “mere intruder” does not, by itself, establish a breach of quiet enjoyment.
- A tenant seeking to stop paying rent on a constructive-eviction theory must show a landlord-caused (or landlord-allowed) condition that makes continued occupancy untenable; reduced profitability from third-party misconduct is not enough on this record.
- Where the landlord responds to complaints by taking steps such as calling security to disperse trespassers, the continued return of trespassers does not alone convert their conduct into a landlord breach of quiet enjoyment.

## Conclusion

Net Realty Holding Trust v. Nelson held that tenants who operated a miniature golf course in a mall were not constructively evicted when noncustomers repeatedly trespassed and loitered, even with reported incidents of an altercation and a theft, because the disturbances were attributable to third parties rather than to any act or allowed condition by the landlord that rendered the premises untenantable; the tenants’ abandonment therefore did not excuse further rent liability.


Net Realty Holding Trust v. Nelson, 358 A.2d 365 (1976)