Commercial Lease Disputes in Michigan: A Practical Checklist

Published June 30, 2026 · Commercial Real Estate · by Hassan A. Zaarour

Commercial leases are negotiated documents, which means the lease itself — not a statute — usually supplies the rules. That is why the first step in any commercial lease dispute is a careful read, and why so many disputes are lost by parties who acted before doing it.

Check these before acting

1. The default and notice provisions. What counts as a default, how notice must be given, to what address, and how long the cure period runs. Notice sent the wrong way is often no notice at all.
2. The guaranty. Who signed personally, for what obligations, and whether it survives an assignment or a lease renewal.
3. The rent definition. Base rent, CAM, taxes, insurance, percentage rent, and whether the disputed charge is actually "rent" for purposes of the default clause.
4. Assignment and change of control. Whether the tenant's business sale triggered a consent requirement.
5. The fee clause. Whether the prevailing party recovers attorney fees, and whether it is mutual.
6. Holdover terms. What the tenant owes for staying past the term, which is often a multiple of base rent.

Self-help is the recurring landlord mistake

A commercial landlord who changes the locks, removes the tenant's property, or shuts off utilities to force payment invites a claim that can dwarf the unpaid rent — even when the tenant is unquestionably in default, and even when the lease appears to authorize it. Michigan requires judicial process to recover possession. Get the judgment.

The tenant side

A tenant facing a default notice has more room than it usually realizes. Common positions include defective notice, waiver from a long pattern of accepted late payments, landlord failure on repair or delivery obligations, constructive eviction, and disputes over how CAM was calculated. Where a tenant needs to exit rather than fight, a negotiated surrender with a mutual release is almost always cheaper than a judgment and a damaged rental history.

Mitigation and damages

A landlord who regains possession generally has to make reasonable efforts to re-let rather than let the space sit and bill the former tenant for the full remaining term. Documenting those efforts — listings, showings, offers — is what makes the damages claim stick.

Business-license and build-out complications

Where a tenant's operating license is tied to the address, or where the landlord promised a build-out that never happened, possession disputes get more complicated than a simple rent case. Those facts should be on the table before the first notice goes out, because they change the leverage on both sides.