Moving Companies: Don’t Rent To Them!
By Richard Marmor, Esq.
AZSA Legal & Legislative Chair
A Can of Worms
“Wait a minute,” I told the caller. “Who rented the space, the moving company or the van driver?”
“The driver, in his own name.”
Before I heard any more, I already had a problem with this situation. If there’s a moving company involved, we know that the property being stored belongs to someone else, their client, and that they only have custody and control over it but not ownership.
Worse, here the tenant is the van driver. Almost certainly he did not have an agent’s authority to sign for and obligate the moving company.
“Ok, then what happened?”
“Apparently there was a dispute over the moving charges,” said the caller. “We are now told that the moving company stored the furniture in order to hide it and hold it hostage. Rent was prepaid for a few months, but is now in arrears, so the unit is scheduled for auction.”
“To whom did you send the pre-auction notices?”
“To the driver, of course, because he’s the tenant, but he has since left the company. He refuses to have any more to do with the situation. We also sent notices to the moving company, but they say, ‘Why are you sending us notices? We have nothing to do with it!’”
Wow. (I thought that; I didn’t say it.) “What do you know about the contents’ real owner?” I asked.
“We heard from him. He’s willing to pay and he wants his things.”
Undoubtedly, and in our hearts, all of us want to see him get his things back, but he remains a stranger to the lease, so giving him access to the property exposes the storage operator to liability.
The Divorce Parallel
Surprisingly, this situation is really no different from the divorce scenarios we all see from time to time. Both spouses are claiming rights in stored property, yet only one is the tenant. I have said time and again: Don’t play divorce court! It’s not your job to weigh parties’ claims and decide who gets the contents of a unit. You have a lease contract with a tenant. That’s where your connection to the unit starts and ends. Claims by others are their problem. Let them go to court and get a court order commanding you to give the estranged party rights, or let that person bid at the auction. Either way, you are off the hook.
Here, the contents’ owner could go to court and get a similar court order. As well, the storage operator can extend the courtesy to him of including him in the auction notices so he can be sure to show up and bid. Whatever the owner has to spend to rescue his things becomes part of his damages in his lawsuit against the moving company.
I Do So Have A Heart
So now I have given you the responsible answer and the safest course of action.
Nevertheless, it’s a little galling to know that you may be making some poor shnook have to buy back his own furniture. So I will point out that there is one difference between the divorce scenario and that of the moving company: In the latter case, the risk of lawsuit is lower.
In the divorce situation you generally have two involved parties, both of whom care – or claim to care – about a unit’s contents. Were you to take sides with the wrong one, the odds that the remaining party will sue you are pretty good.
On the other hand, in the moving company scenario, the moving company often not only does not have any interest in the contents, it doesn’t want anything more to do with the lease. Therefore, were you to make a deal with the contents’ true owner, it is unlikely – not impossible, just unlikely – that the movers will sue you. You may therefore consider measuring your risk based upon what you know about the situation and allow the non-tenant to get his things. I would add to that that you would need to be very certain that the person you are dealing with is indeed the contents’ owner, otherwise you could find yourself being sued by the true owner!
The Moral of the Story
Admittedly, this was an extreme case, but it illustrates what can happen when a facility accepts a moving company as a tenant.
From time to time a moving company may have a legitimate need to store a clients’ property. The problem remains, however, that once rid of the property, the moving company generally has no vested interest in it, not exactly an ideal tenant.
Therefore whenever a moving company wants to rent space to off-load a client’s property, the storage operator should require that the named tenant be the property’s owner, not the moving company . . . and certainly not the driver!
[This article deals with a law related subject at a general level and is not intended for you to rely on. You should consult a lawyer before making a final decision in a situation involving any legal issues.]
Richard Marmor, Esq. is a self-storage consultant, facility owner and former facility operator in the Phoenix area. He is also the founding President and current member of the Board of Directors of the Arizona Self-Storage Association, serving as Chair of the Legal and Legislative Committee.
Source: Behind Closed Doors, AZSA Newsletter Archives