## Facts

- A shopping-center partnership leased retail space in a strip mall to Pearle Vision Center under a written commercial lease.
- Pearle paid rent but did not take possession or open for business in the premises.
- The landlord alleged that leaving the store dark would harm the shopping center’s business and tenant mix.
- The lease contained no express continuous-occupancy or continuous-operation provision.
- The landlord sued in equity seeking an injunction compelling Pearle to “occupy and use” the premises, asserting an implied obligation arising from the lease and shopping-center context.

## Issues

1. Whether, accepting the complaint’s well-pleaded facts and reasonable inferences as true, it was clear as a matter of law that the lease could not imply an obligation for the tenant to occupy and use the premises.
2. Whether the trial court properly sustained preliminary objections in the nature of a demurrer and dismissed the complaint at the pleading stage.

## Decision

- The Superior Court of Pennsylvania reversed the order sustaining the demurrer and remanded for further proceedings.
- The court held that the complaint and incorporated lease stated a minimally sufficient claim that an obligation to occupy could be implied; it was not legally impossible on the pleadings.
- The court did not decide whether an implied obligation actually existed or was breached, and it did not address other preliminary objections not reached by the trial court.

## Legal Principles

- On a demurrer, courts accept as true all well-pleaded facts and all reasonable inferences; dismissal is proper only when the law is clear that no recovery is possible.
- Pennsylvania courts are cautious about resolving contract-based claims on demurrer where factual development and interpretation may bear on whether duties should be implied.
- In a shopping-center lease, an obligation to occupy and operate may, in some circumstances, be implied from lease structure and context even absent an express continuous-operation clause; prior cases rejecting implication in other leases are not a categorical bar.

## Conclusion

The appellate court reinstated the landlord’s action because, at the pleading stage, it could not be said as a matter of law that the lease foreclosed any implied duty for the tenant to occupy and use the shopping-center premises, leaving the question for further litigation on remand.


Slater v. Pearle Vision Ctr., Inc., 376 Pa. Super. 580, 546 A.2d 676 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1988)