Covid-19 and commercial rents

T.Com. Paris, 11 Dec. 2020, n°2020035120

Under the terms of an order issued on December 11, 2020, the President of the Paris Commercial Court, ruling in summary proceedings, ordered the lessee to pay the lessor the rents due to him according to the breakdown as of November 30, 2020.

The lessee, who claimed to be a victim of the administrative closures of non-essential businesses, had stopped paying his rents, charges and accessories since April 2020.

To oppose the request for payment made by the lessor, the lessee successively invoked:

• a breach by the lessor of its obligation to deliver due to a case of force majeure,
• the temporary disappearance of the thing rented;
• the need to revise the lease due to the contingency theory

To condemn the lessee, the president of the Paris commercial court held that:

• the Covid-19 cannot be qualified as unforeseeable and therefore be assimilated to a case of force majeure;
• the loss of the rented thing is also ineffective, if access to the rented place has been temporarily prohibited to the public, the tenant could still access it physically;
• The request for revision of the rent on the basis of unforeseeability cannot be accepted since the amount of the contractually agreed rent remained the same during the events and therefore did not become “excessively onerous”.
• The lessee fails to demonstrate his good faith.

A manifestly illicit disturbance having been noted, the president of the court considered that it was appropriate to put an end to it and to condemn, on a provisional basis, the lessee to pay his rental arrears.