Instead, tenants expand on the primary holding of Joerg to argue that
any mention of an owner’s insurance policy in the lease creates reliance in
the tenants and a presumption that the costs of such insurance are being
passed on to them. Joerg, at ¶ 11. This misinterprets the holding of Joerg,
which concerns the second form of obligation in a lease that may create
coinsured status in the tenant. The Court in Joerg held that where a lease
requires a landlord to carry fire insurance on the leased premises, it
implicitly was for the benefit of the tenant; the costs of which were mostly
likely passed on to the tenant; and thereby made the tenant a coinsured. Id.
at ¶¶ 9–11 (discussing the policy behind Fairchild Square Co. v. Green
Mountain Bagel, Inc., 163 Vt. 433 (1995)). While tenants’ argument latches
onto the underlying equity arguments in this situation, their position in
regards to the lease is different. Paragraph 28 does not create any
obligation in Northgate to carry fire insurance. Instead, it merely notes that
Northgate may have insurance. It lacks any language that would even
imply that the insurance was carried for mutual benefit, and it is not even
clear what type of insurance paragraph 28 means. If any obligation comes
out of paragraph 28, it would be for the tenants, whom the paragraph
requires to do nothing to raise Northgate’s premiums—presumably by
refraining from dangerous or destructive activities in the apartment.