In what was sure to be disappointing, a German court ruled that a company may not cut their rent because their landlord sunbathed naked in their building’s courtyard.
It all started when a Frankfort human resources company rented an office in a building in an upmarket residential district. That company ended up withholding their rent because it objected to their landlord’s sunbathing without his clothes on, only one of their complaints.
The landlord, in response, filed a lawsuit against his tenant for non-payment of rent.
In their ruling, the Frankfurt state court disregarded the company’s justification for withholding the payment. They concluded that “the plaintiff sunbathing himself naked in the courtyard did not affect the usage of the rented property.”
They said they couldn’t find an “inadmissible, deliberately improper effect on the property.”
The judges were addressing an appeal against a lower court decision that had favored the landlord for the most part but did, however, conclude that the company was entitled to a three-month reduction in rent due to nearby, noisy construction.
The court noted that the only way to observe the landlord’s sunbathing location from the rented office was to lean far out the window. It felt that the renter failed to establish that the landlord walked to his sunbathing location in the courtyard naked. “On the contrary, the plaintiff stated credibly that he always wore a bathrobe which he only took off just before the sun lounger,” it said.
