Tenant can argue that the lockdown is a government regulation, which rendered their performance under their lease contracts as “impracticable” or “impossible”. Now what is “frustration of purpose”? The classic example of this is that you rent an apartment so that you can see the President of the United States pass through on the street just below the apartment. Then, it turns out that the President canceled that trip because he decided to play golf instead in Mar-a-Lago. The fact that the President cancelled his trip means you can no longer view him from the apartment that you rented, so your purpose of renting that apartment has been “frustrated”, thus you are now excused from paying rent on the lease contract. That sounds pretty simple, right?

A lot of small businesses simply cannot pay their rent nowadays because of the pandemic. There is just no business because of the lockdown and the natural fear of people of getting infected by the virus, which may lead to death. I have a friend up north who got the virus from traveling in February. He arrived back in CA on March 7 and was rushed to the ER and ICU the minute the plane landed. He could not breathe and had high fever. He’s still in a coma now and it’s been over two months that he’s been on a ventilator. He’s suffered multiple mini strokes because the virus causes the blood to coagulate. He truly needs divine intervention to get healed. This is the kind of situation we are faced now and this is the real world that we live in now until a vaccine is discovered. Paying commercial rent seems to be a small problem when compared to the risk of dying.