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That force majeure clause in my rental agreement - before and after COVID hit in March 2020
I had a standard force majeure that said basically nothing about pandemics, but after the landlord tried to use it to cancel my lease I got one added that specifically lists disease outbreaks and government shutdowns. Anyone else have a contract where a single event made you rewrite a whole section?
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patricia_hill6014h ago
Oh man, you need that clause to be super specific about government orders and quarantines. I had to do the same thing after my landlord tried to claim a snowstorm was a force majeure event.
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kellyallen12h ago
Actually I gotta push back a bit on that. Snowstorms might not be a standard force majeure event but they can still count if they make it literally impossible to do what you agreed to. The key is whether the thing really prevents you from doing your part, not just makes it harder. A blizzard that shuts down the whole city for days could totally be a valid reason to pause things. But yeah, a couple inches of snow that melts by noon? That's just an inconvenience.
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ryan_hart3811h ago
Snowstorms usually don't hit the legal standard for force majeure because they're predictable seasonal events, not truly unforeseeable. Courts tend to look at whether the event was actually impossible to work around, not just inconvenient or expensive. If your landlord can claim snow as a valid excuse, that clause is probably too vague to protect either side fairly.
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