Late rent payments may not justify eviction

When a tenant pays rent late habitually and the landlord does not object, courts will generally not allow eviction because the landlord’s actions have shown that the late payments are not material. It is as if the terms of the agreement were renegotiated. But what happens if the landlord does object and even imposing penalties, as allowed in the lease, for the late payments? Can longstanding late payments justify eviction then? One might think the answer is yes because the timing of rental payments is generally thought to be a material term of the rent agreement. But a Massachusetts courts refused to allow eviction of a commercial tenant (a restaurant) in these circumstances. Varano v. PDJM Land Trust, LLC, 230 N.E.3d 1060 (Mass. App. Ct. 2024). The court found that the rent payments were usually only a few days late, although sometimes as much as a few weeks. The court found that the late payments did not harm the landlord and were compensated by the late fees. And the court also considered the tenant’s circumstances and deemed it relevant that, if evicted, the restaurant would go out of business and would be unlikely to find similar space to operate in that part of the city (the North End in Boston). It seemed, in effect, to balance the interests of the parties and found that the breaches by the tenant were not sufficiently serious to justify forfeiture of its leasehold.