Bad Neighbors: Permission to Break the Lease?

The sefer Teshuvat Mishpat Tzedek discusses an interesting case concerning neighborly relations which is unfortunately not an uncommon occurrence.[1] There was once a Jewish man who rented an apartment located above a store. The store itself was also being rented out to a Jewish person. One day, a frightening event took place. A group of Gentiles maliciously evicted the Jewish merchant from the store and simply took it over, filling the store with their own merchandise and using the store for themselves. Of course, this was done without the landlord’s permission.

The tenant living above the store called the landlord, the owner of the building, explaining to him that he wanted to back out of the remainder of his lease and find somewhere else to live. He explained that his new “neighbors” are clearly unsavory characters, and he did not want to put himself or his family in any type of danger. He felt that it was in his best interest to leave.

The landlord was not so quick to oblige. He claimed that since there was a signed agreement between them, the tenant was obligated to honor the lease. Furthermore, he argued that since there are many stores in the area that are rented out to Gentiles, the tenant should have realized that there was a chance that he could end up with a Gentile neighbor sometime during the course of his lease. As such, he rejected the man’s request to break the lease. The tenant argued back that while he certainly realized that Gentiles might come and rent space nearby, he did not anticipate or prepare for the possibility that they could be violent people who would come and evict the Jewish storeowner below by force. Indeed, the Jewish tenant had been scheduled to remain in the store for quite some time.

The Teshuvat Mishpat Tzedek initially ruled against the tenant and offered the following explanation. Although it is true that living with gentile gangsters in the store below makes it more difficult to live in the apartment above, a contract must be honored even when more effort is required to honor it than initially expected. Upon further consideration, however, he decided that the threat to the tenant’s safety and well-being is genuine and that the apartment is indeed "unlivable." As such, he felt that the situation is comparable to a rented building that had collapsed, in which case the lease is terminated from that point onward. Accordingly, he instructed the tenant to pay for the time he lived in the apartment and released him from having to pay for the remainder of the lease.

[1] Teshuvot Mishpat Tzedek (Melamed) 2:31 cited in the "Daf Yomi Digest" to Bava Metzia 103.