## Facts

- Stiles Family Limited Partnership, III, LLP (the landlord) owned a 169-acre farm in Jefferson County, West Virginia.
- In October 2006, the landlord leased the farm to Riggs and Stiles, Inc. and Christopher Stiles (the tenants) under a written “Farm Lease.”
- The lease limited the tenants’ use of the premises to agricultural purposes.
- During the lease term, the tenants discussed the possibility of using the farm for a multi-day outdoor music festival.
- Based on those discussions, Walther Productions applied to the Jefferson County Board of Zoning Appeals for a permit to hold the festival on the leased property.
- The landlord objected to the application on the ground that a music festival was not an agricultural use permitted by the lease.
- Walther Productions withdrew the permit application, and the festival never took place on the property.
- The tenants continued farming the property throughout these events.
- The landlord sued the tenants for breach of the lease, asserting that the tenants’ involvement with the permit application and proposed festival violated the agricultural-use restriction and amounted to an anticipatory breach.
- The Circuit Court of Jefferson County granted summary judgment to the tenants, concluding that the filing of the permit application alone did not constitute a breach.
- The landlord appealed to the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.

## Issues

1. Whether the tenants breached (or anticipatorily breached) an agricultural-use farm lease by allowing an outside event organizer to seek zoning approval for a music festival, where the application was withdrawn, the festival never occurred, and the tenants continued to farm the land.
2. Whether summary judgment for the tenants was proper on the landlord’s breach-of-lease and anticipatory-breach theories.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia affirmed the circuit court’s grant of summary judgment to the tenants.
- The court agreed that the permit application, without any actual non-agricultural use of the land, did not establish a breach of the lease’s agricultural-use limitation.
- The court also rejected the landlord’s anticipatory-breach theory on this record, where the tenants continued to perform under the lease and the contemplated festival never happened.
- The court found no reversible error and resolved the appeal by memorandum decision.

## Legal Principles

- A lease restricting use to agricultural purposes is not breached by discussions about a possible non-agricultural event and a related permit application when the land remains in agricultural use and the event never takes place.
- Anticipatory breach (repudiation) requires a clear, definite, and unequivocal manifestation that a party will not perform its contractual obligations; continued performance is inconsistent with repudiation.
- Summary judgment is proper when the material facts are undisputed and, as a matter of law, those facts do not support a claim for breach or anticipatory breach.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed summary judgment for the tenants because the record showed continuous farming, a withdrawn permit request, and no music festival on the property, which together did not amount to either an actual breach of the agricultural-use lease restriction or an anticipatory breach.


Stiles Family Ltd. v. Riggs and Stiles, Inc., 2016 WL 6819788 (2016)