malone 118 main st v hugos restaurant, No. 23-cv-1881 (Vt. Super. Ct. 2026)

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 The lease’s CAM costs, which as noted above, include provisions for insurance
premiums, property taxes, operation and maintenance costs, and other costs generally associated
with common area maintenance, requires Defendants to (1) pay a fixed monthly CAM cost; (2)
allow that number to be adjusted periodically; and (3) periodically, no less than once a year, pay
a difference that arose between the CAM costs and Plaintiff’s actual expenses. Id. at § 5(c) and
(d). In doing this, the language is consistent with assigning all costs to the Defendants, but it
keeps control of the expenses and their initial payments with Plaintiff.
In other words, Plaintiff remained responsible for paying the property taxes at 118 Main
Street, but there was an expectation that Defendants would, through the CAM costs, reimburse
those expenses to the extent that they concerned Defendant’s square footage of rental property
and a percentage of the common areas. Id. Further, the CAM charges are not based on a
common area or a percentage of use of the common area, but they are calculated based on the
square footage of the premises being leased at a rate of $2.00 per square foot to be paid on a
monthly basis.6
Beyond these provisions, there are sections of the lease that required Defendants to do
some of their own repairs and maintenance while reserving other provisions for Plaintiff to
perform, particularly in regard to any HVAC or structural repairs. Exhibit A at §§ 12, 13.
The heart of the parties’ dispute, at least for purposes of this motion, concerns how to interpret
Section 12(b) concerning the electricity, district heat, propane, and water and sewer charges
relating to the 46.6% of the premises leased to and controlled by the Defendants. In this dispute,
the Court detects no question as to whether Defendants were responsible for these costs. The
provisions of the lease assign these expenses to Defendants, and such an interpretation is
consistent with general triple net provisions in the lease. The parties’ dispute lies with the
question of whether Section 12(b) required Defendants to pay those expenses directly to the
providers, or if they were intended to be folded into the CAM costs.
Looking at the actual clause, it behooves the analysis to reprint the language in full:
[T]he Tenant covenants and agrees: * * *