Leasing Expert Witnesses
Leases allocate risk over long periods, and when market conditions, business plans, or asset performance change, the parties often disagree about what their agreements require. Shopping center landlords and national retailers contest co-tenancy clauses, percentage rent, permitted use restrictions, and operating covenants, while office and industrial tenants dispute operating expense reconciliations, renewal terms, and the consequences of default. Equipment lessors and lessees litigate residual values, return conditions, and whether a transaction was a true lease or a disguised financing arrangement. In each case, the central question is how sophisticated parties in the relevant market customarily structure and perform leases, and what each party's conduct means under that framework.
A leasing expert helps counsel interpret disputed provisions against industry custom and quantify the economic consequences of a breach. The expert can analyze lease language, negotiation history, and market conditions at signing, compare rent and concessions with prevailing terms, and evaluate whether a landlord or lessor acted reasonably in reletting, approving assignments, or calculating charges. In equipment matters, the analysis may address fair market value, residual assumptions, maintenance obligations, and commercial practices in lease servicing. These findings support or rebut breach claims, establish whether a party reasonably mitigated damages, and provide a defensible measure of lost rent, excess costs, or diminished asset value.
Leasing practice varies significantly across retail, office, industrial, and equipment markets, so the expert's transactional experience should match the asset and lease structure at issue. Our leasing experts include commercial real estate professionals who have negotiated retail, office, and industrial leases, developers and property managers with decades of operating experience, members of the Institute of Real Estate Management, and a former retail executive who helped expand a regional chain to roughly 1,000 stores. The network also includes equipment leasing and finance specialists who have testified on commercial leasing and servicing practices, and many experts have testified on shopping center lease disputes, chain store leasing, permitted use clauses, and mitigation of damages. Round Table Group has completed more than 75,000 expert searches for litigators, and you can start the search for your leasing matter by calling us at (202) 908-4500.
