Tampa Commercial Lease Dispute Attorney

Cory Cannon represents commercial landlords and business tenants across Tampa Bay in disputes over nonresidential leases: nonpayment and eviction, common area maintenance (CAM) charges, repair and build-out obligations, and early termination. One legal fact controls everything on this page, so we put it first: a commercial lease is governed by the lease itself and by Part I of Florida’s landlord-tenant law, the nonresidential tenancies part (§§ 83.001-83.251, Fla. Stat.). The tenant protections that shield residential renters live in Part II and do not apply here. Florida courts read a commercial lease as a bargain between businesses and enforce it, largely, as written.

That distinction decides most commercial lease fights: the notice you must send, the speed of an eviction, who pays for a storm repair, and how a CAM bill is challenged all come from the lease and from Part I, not from the consumer-style rules a residential tenant relies on. This page is about a dispute with the other party to your lease, not a fight with an insurance company; if a storm damaged the building and the question is who pays to fix it, the triage section below sorts the claims that look identical from the inside. It is part of our broader business litigation practice.

What a commercial lease dispute looks like

We mean a fight between the two parties to a nonresidential lease about what it requires and whether it was honored. The tenant is a business: a contractor’s equipment yard, a warehouse or distribution space, a fabrication shop, a retail suite, a medical or professional office. These are the common shapes a commercial lease dispute takes across Hillsborough, Pinellas, Manatee, and Sarasota counties.

If you are the landlord

• Nonpayment. Rent, CAM, or taxes stopped coming, the tenant is still in the space, and you need possession back or the money paid. This is the most common commercial dispute and the one with the fastest statutory path.
• Holdover. The lease term ended and the tenant will not leave: sometimes while negotiating a renewal it does not intend to sign, sometimes to buy free time in a space it cannot yet replace.
• Other material breach. Unpermitted subletting or assignment, a use the lease does not allow, damage beyond ordinary wear, an unapproved alteration, or a lapse in the insurance the lease requires the tenant to carry.

If you are the tenant

• CAM and pass-through overcharges. The annual reconciliation lands far above the estimates you paid all year, loaded with capital costs, management fees, or expenses the lease excludes.
• Repairs the landlord will not make. The roof leaks over your inventory, the HVAC serving your space failed, or a structural problem makes the premises unusable, and the landlord points back at you.
• Failure to deliver or finish the build-out. The space was promised by a date, or with a tenant improvement allowance and landlord work, and it arrived late, unfinished, or not as drawn, while your rent-commencement clock runs.
• Lockout or self-help. The landlord changed the locks, removed your property, or shut off power over a rent dispute without going through the courts.

Whichever seat you are in, the analysis starts the same way: we read the entire lease (exhibits, work letter, amendments, estoppel certificates) before forming a view.

The lease controls, and commercial is not residential

Part I sets only a light statutory frame (grounds for eviction, the court-registry rule, holdover remedies) and leaves the rest to the contract. Several clauses do most of the work in a dispute:

• Rent and additional rent. Most commercial leases define CAM, taxes, and insurance as “additional rent,” so a default in any of them triggers the same remedies as a default in base rent.
• The lease structure. A triple-net (NNN) lease pushes taxes, insurance, and maintenance onto the tenant; a gross lease bundles them into rent; most sit between. Which structure you signed decides who owns most repair and cost questions.
• Repair and casualty. Who fixes what, who restores the building after a fire or storm, and whether rent abates while the space is unusable.
• Default, cure, and remedies. What counts as a default, how much notice and cure time the other side gets, and what the landlord may then do: terminate, retake and relet, or sue for rent as it accrues, with or without acceleration.
• Transfer and dispute resolution. Whether the tenant may assign or sublet and on what consent standard, plus the prevailing-party fee, venue, jury-waiver, and arbitration provisions.

Two documents that are easy to overlook often decide a case: the work letter (the exhibit describing each side’s construction obligations before move-in) governs most build-out fights, and an estoppel certificate (a signed statement, usually given to a lender or buyer, confirming the lease terms and that no defaults exist) can lock a party into positions it later regrets. We read both at the start.

Nonpayment and commercial eviction: the fast track and its trap

When a commercial tenant stops paying, Florida gives the landlord a quick path to possession, and the tenant one narrow but decisive way to slow it down.

The path starts with a written notice. Under section 83.20, Florida Statutes, a nonresidential tenant may be removed for holding over after the term, for defaulting on rent after 3 days’ written notice demanding rent or possession, or for failing to cure a different material breach after 15 days’ written notice (unless the lease sets its own cure period, which controls). The 3-day notice must be precise (the right amount, the right party, the right method of service) because an eviction built on a defective notice can be dismissed and started over, and the delay is the whole game.

Then comes the trap that surprises tenants and their lawyers more than any other rule in Part I. Under section 83.232, a commercial tenant who wants to defend against an eviction must pay the rent the complaint claims as unpaid (or, if the amount is contested, the amount the court determines) into the court registry, and must keep paying rent into the registry as it comes due during the case. Miss that deposit and the statute treats it as an absolute waiver of the tenant’s defenses, entitling the landlord to an immediate default for possession without a further hearing. A tenant can have a strong claim (overcharged CAM, a landlord who failed to repair, a genuine offset) and still lose the building for failing to fund the registry on time.

For landlords, that statute is why clean commercial evictions move fast: correct notice, the right number pleaded, and the tenant either funds the registry or defaults. For a tenant, the only counter is to contest the amount properly and on time, and to calendar the registry deadline first.

CAM charges and operating-expense disputes

Common area maintenance charges (the tenant’s share of the cost of running the property, from landscaping and parking upkeep to shared utilities and management) drive a large share of commercial lease fights, and almost all are won or lost on the lease language, not on argument. Most leases bill estimated CAM monthly, then “reconcile” once a year against actual costs; the dispute starts when that reconciliation lands far above what the tenant paid in.

The questions that decide a CAM dispute are all textual:

• What does the lease actually let the landlord pass through? Well-drafted leases exclude a long list: capital improvements, the landlord’s financing costs, leasing commissions, expenses reimbursed by insurance, and costs to fix original construction defects. A charge outside the definition is not owed, whatever the invoice says.
• Is there a cap? Many leases cap year-over-year increases in controllable expenses; if yours does, the math is checked against the cap.
• How is the tenant’s share computed? The pro rata share (the tenant’s square footage divided by the building’s) and the gross-up method (how fixed costs are adjusted when the building is not full) are frequent sources of overbilling.
• Does the lease give an audit right? Many leases let the tenant audit the landlord’s books within a set window after the reconciliation, often the fastest route to a credit, but it usually expires, and a missed deadline can waive the challenge entirely.

We work these disputes by putting the reconciliation next to the lease and reading both line by line, and when the numbers turn on the cost of building systems or repairs, we check the figures against real bids from licensed local contractors rather than the landlord’s line items.

After a storm: which fight you actually have, and where it goes

Tampa Bay’s commercial buildings take weather (Hurricane Ian in 2022, then Helene and Milton in 2024 drove wind and storm surge across the region), and storm damage to a leased building can spawn separate disputes that feel identical from inside the business but route to different practices. Sorting them early saves months.

• The insurer underpaid the damage. If the fight is with the carrier (the claim on the building was denied, delayed, or paid below the real cost of repair), that is a first-party insurance claim, not a lease dispute. Our commercial property claim page and the broader property insurance claims practice handle it.
• The repair was done, but done wrong. If a contractor rebuilt the roof, the wall, or the systems and the work is defective, that is a construction defect claim on its own timetable and pre-suit process. See construction defects.
• The repair contractor walked off or there is a payment fight. If the work was abandoned, or the dispute is over invoices and liens, that is construction litigation.
• Who must pay for and perform the repair, landlord or tenant, and whether rent abates. That question stays here. It is decided by the lease’s casualty and repair clauses, and in a triple-net lease the answer is frequently not what the tenant expects.

Read the casualty clause first. A typical commercial casualty provision says who restores the building after a covered loss, sets a timeline, gives one or both parties a right to terminate if the damage is severe, and addresses rent abatement while the space is unusable. Under a triple-net lease those maintenance and insurance obligations often shift a surprising amount of storm exposure onto the tenant, so a warehouse tenant who assumed the landlord would fix everything can find the lease says otherwise. We read the casualty, repair, and insurance clauses as one system.

Build-out, delivery, and tenant-improvement disputes

Many commercial leases contemplate construction before the tenant ever opens: the landlord delivers the space in a defined condition, funds a tenant improvement (TI) allowance, or performs “landlord’s work” described in a work letter, and the tenant builds out the rest. When that work runs late, comes in unfinished, or does not match what was drawn, the lease and its work letter, not general fairness, decide the remedy. The recurring fights: the space was not delivered on time, so rent commencement is disputed; the landlord’s work was defective; the TI allowance was never funded or was clawed back on a technicality; or a mid-construction change blew the budget with no change order papered. These sit at the seam between a lease dispute and a construction dispute, and we read work letters, allowances, and draw requests closely. If your problem is squarely a fight with a contractor rather than your landlord, our vendor dispute and construction litigation pages may be the better fit, and we will tell you which lane you are in.

Holdover, abandonment, and early termination

When a lease ends badly, three scenarios come up repeatedly.

Holdover. A tenant who stays past the end of the term without a new agreement is a holdover. Under section 83.06, a landlord may demand double rent from a tenant who refuses to surrender at the end of the lease. Many commercial leases also set their own holdover premium of 150 to 200 percent of rent, and where the lease sets the number, its clause generally governs.

Abandonment and the landlord’s election. When a tenant abandons mid-term, Florida law gives the landlord a choice among remedies, not a single automatic outcome: treat the lease as terminated and retake the premises; retake and relet for the tenant’s account, holding the tenant responsible for the shortfall; or stand on the lease and sue for rent as it accrues. Each election changes what the landlord can later recover, and choosing wrong, or acting in a way that looks like acceptance of a surrender, can forfeit a claim. Under section 83.05, a landlord has a right of possession when a nonresidential tenant defaults in rent or abandons the premises; which election protects the claim is a decision to make with counsel before touching the space.

Early termination. A tenant that needs out before the term ends should start with the lease’s own exit machinery: any early-termination option, the assignment and subletting clause, and the remedies clause. Whether an acceleration clause (which makes the entire remaining rent due at once on default) is enforceable, and how it squares with a landlord’s later reletting, are questions Florida courts scrutinize, because a landlord generally cannot both accelerate all the rent and keep the re-rented value of the space. A negotiated exit or a clean assignment almost always beats a default.

Self-help, lockouts, and constructive eviction

Two mirror-image mistakes end up in court. On the landlord side, self-help (changing the locks, removing the tenant’s property, or cutting off utilities to force payment) is dangerous; some leases purport to authorize it, but a landlord who gets it wrong risks liability for wrongful eviction and for the tenant’s lost business and goods, and the statutory eviction is almost always safer. On the tenant side, constructive eviction (abandoning the space and stopping rent because the landlord’s failure to repair made it unusable) is a real doctrine but a risky self-help move of its own: a tenant who walks out and turns out to be wrong is simply in default. Check either move against the lease and the statute first.

Deadlines that control a Florida commercial lease claim

The limitation periods below are the outer walls. The lease’s own notice, cure, and audit provisions sit far inside them and routinely control first.

Two cautions. First, “from the breach” is not always a single date: a lease can be breached repeatedly, and each missed rent payment or annual reconciliation can carry its own accrual date. Second, the deadlines that actually bite in commercial leasing are usually contractual: a CAM-audit right that expires ninety days after the reconciliation, or a claims-notice clause measured in days, ends a claim long before the five-year limit. Verify your dates with a lawyer, not a webpage, including this one.

What the case is worth

For landlords, damages usually start with unpaid rent and additional rent through judgment, plus the cost of returning the space to its required surrender condition. Beyond that, recovery depends on the remedies clause: future rent may be recoverable as it accrues, or accelerated where the lease provides for it, in each case reduced by what the landlord collects or reasonably could collect by re-renting. Holdover premiums, late fees, interest, and prevailing-party fees round out the claim.

For tenants, the measure depends on the wrong. An overcharged tenant recovers the CAM or pass-through paid above what the lease allowed, sometimes with the audit costs. A tenant the landlord failed to serve (unrepaired premises, a build-out never delivered) may recover the cost of the repairs the landlord owed, the value of the lost use, and, in a constructive-eviction or failure-to-deliver case, lost business proven with real records. A tenant wrongfully locked out or dispossessed has a claim for the resulting harm: damaged inventory, interrupted operations.

Both sides carry a duty to act reasonably to keep damages from growing: a landlord who leaves a re-rentable space empty, a tenant who abandons repairable premises. Document what you did to limit the harm; it is part of the claim.

Who pays the attorney fees

Most commercial leases contain a prevailing-party attorney-fee clause: the loser pays the winner’s reasonable fees. Two features matter more than people expect. First, under section 57.105(7), Florida Statutes, a fee clause written to benefit only the landlord is read as reciprocal, so a tenant who prevails can recover fees under the same clause, and the reverse. Second, that fee exposure runs both directions, which makes litigating partly an underwriting decision: a weak position in a fee-shifting lease can cost more than the rent in dispute. We price that risk honestly at the outset.

Our billing follows the case. Commercial lease disputes are generally handled hourly, sometimes in flat-fee stages for a discrete step like a demand or an eviction, with prevailing-party fees pursued where the lease or a statute provides them, and landlord-side rent collection occasionally a fit for a hybrid arrangement. We tell you which model fits, and what your lease’s fee clause means, at the initial consultation, which is free.

How we work these cases

Cory Cannon was founded by a Florida attorney with a family history in construction spanning generations. That upbringing shapes how we handle commercial leases: we are fluent in the construction and building-systems questions these disputes turn on (what a repair actually costs, whether a build-out was really finished, what belongs in an operating-expense pass-through), and we read leases, work letters, and CAM reconciliations line by line rather than skimming for the headline number. When a dispute turns on the condition of the building, a structural failure, or the quality of a repair, we retain independent licensed engineers to evaluate it and give opinions we can put in front of a judge, a jury, or an arbitrator.

Because this practice sits alongside our construction and insurance work, we see a lease dispute in its full context: the CAM fight may hide a defective building system, the build-out standoff may really be a contractor problem. When your issue belongs in another lane (a straight breach of contract claim, an indemnification or risk-shifting fight over an injury or damage on the premises, or a dispute with a supplier or contractor), we point you to it plainly.

Where we handle these disputes

We represent commercial landlords and business tenants in the circuit and county courts of Hillsborough, Pinellas, Manatee, and Sarasota counties (Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Brandon, Bradenton, Sarasota, Venice, and the communities between) and in arbitration where the lease requires it. Commercial evictions and small-dollar disputes are filed in county court; larger damages claims proceed in circuit court. Retail, office, industrial, and mixed-use leases all follow the same Part I framework.

Talk to us before positions harden

Commercial lease disputes are usually shaped in the first moves: the notice that goes out, the registry deposit made or missed, the reletting decision, the audit demand sent before its window closes. If a tenant has stopped paying, or a landlord has served you, or a CAM bill or a storm repair has turned into a standoff, bring us the lease with its exhibits, amendments, correspondence, and ledger. We will tell you what the lease actually requires, what your claim is worth, and what it will cost to pursue. Contact us for a free consultation.