Specify Tenant’s Alleged Lease Violations in Eviction Notice

Make sure your eviction notices (a.k.a. notices to quit) specify exactly which duty and section of the lease the tenant violated. Otherwise the notice may be too vague and you won’t be able to get a court to evict the tenant no matter what it allegedly did wrong.

A Connecticut case involving a restaurant tenant shows how a vague eviction notice can undo an otherwise valid eviction claim. The landlord’s eviction complaint—that is, the pleading filed in the actual court case—set out nearly half a dozen lease violations, including removal of restaurant furnishings, using the property for purposes other than conducting a restaurant business, improper storage of materials, failure to keep the premises free of garbage and trash, and failure to provide documentation of insurance coverage. Each allegation also contained a reference to a particular section of the lease. But the actual eviction notice was much less specific—all it did was cite “violations of the lease.”

The tenant asked the court to dismiss the claim because the notice was so vague. The court felt that it had no choice but to agree. The whole point of the notice to quit is to give the tenant an opportunity to fix the violations, or at the very least, prepare its legal defense, the court explained. The lease in this case ran 13 pages and consisted of 26 sections. While it’s possible that the tenant may have known what it was being accused of, “it was certainly also plausible” that the tenant didn’t know which “violations of the lease” the landlord would ultimately claim in its complaint. And since the notice to quit was defective, the court had no jurisdiction—that is, legal authority—to rule on the eviction claim [Vidiaki, LLC v. Just Breakfast & Things!!! LLC, 2010 Conn. Super. LEXIS 279].