Bkeezy’s Speakeasy sells beer and wine out of a storefront on North Market Street in Frederick, Maryland, under a five-year lease signed in February 2023. Like a lot of commercial leases, this one folded real estate taxes, water and sewer bills, late fees, and HVAC costs into a single line item called “Additional Rent,” payable on the same terms as base rent. The lease also had the tenant waive its statutory right to redeem the space, meaning if a court ever entered judgment for the landlord, paying the back rent afterward wouldn’t buy the lease back. In August 2024 the landlord filed for summary ejectment, claiming $16,240.30 of that Additional Rent was unpaid. On paper, the tenant had no way back in if it lost.
A commercial tenant can validly sign away the right to redeem a lease after an eviction judgment. What a landlord can’t do is win that judgment on a charge the tenant was never actually told about, in writing, before the case was filed.
The redemption waiver held up, but only by one vote. The Supreme Court of Maryland split 4-3 on whether a commercial tenant can waive the statutory right of redemption in Real Property § 8-401 without running into public policy. The majority said yes: “Parties are free to allocate rights and remedies by contract unless a statute says otherwise,” and nothing in the statute says otherwise for nonresidential leases.[1] Three justices disagreed, and one wrote that the legislature, not the court, should be the one to decide whether commercial tenants ought to be allowed to sign that right away at all.[2] A one-vote margin on a question that reaches every commercial lease in the state with a redemption waiver in it is not the same as a settled question.
The 10-day notice residential tenants get simply doesn’t exist for commercial ones, and the court said so unanimously. Real Property § 8-401(c)(1) requires a landlord to send written notice of intent to sue and give the tenant 10 days to cure, but the statute says “residential premises” in the operative clause.[3] All seven justices agreed that language means what it says: no pre-suit cure notice for commercial tenants, full stop.[1] Whatever protection a residential tenant gets from that 10-day window, a commercial tenant negotiating a Maryland lease has to write into the lease itself, because the legislature didn’t put it there for them.
The eviction failed anyway, on the one thing the landlord actually controlled: its own billing. The court held that a landlord can obtain possession only for rent that was due and unpaid when the case was filed, and a charge the tenant never had notice of, its nature, its amount, its deadline, can’t be the basis for that judgment.[1][2] The landlord’s late fees turned out to be logged inconsistently, with some entries appearing in the file only the day before trial, which reads less like an automatic lease charge and more like something invented on the way to the courthouse.[2] Once the fees came out, the claimed balance didn’t hold up either.
None of this is unfamiliar territory for a legal system that lets sophisticated parties write around a default protection, the same way a mitigation waiver clause lets a landlord opt out of the duty to re-lease. What’s different here is that the opt-out only worked as far as the landlord’s own paperwork let it. The redemption waiver was airtight. The billing behind the eviction wasn’t, and airtight beats one out of two.
A waiver that only protects clean records#
For a landlord’s counsel, this ruling is an argument for treating Additional Rent like a receivable, not a lease clause: itemized, dated, and sent to the tenant before the balance is used to justify anything in court. Acrebase’s clause library can flag Maryland commercial leases where the Additional Rent definition is broad but the lease itself says nothing about how or when those charges get billed, the gap that turned a winnable eviction into a lost one here. Its negotiation playbook can also carry a standard notice-and-cure provision as a fallback position for tenants negotiating in states, like Maryland, where the statute doesn’t supply one on its own.
The practical takeaway: if you’re a commercial landlord in Maryland relying on a broadly defined Additional Rent clause, bill every component of it on a fixed, documented schedule, because an undocumented charge won’t survive scrutiny even where the law otherwise favors you. If you’re a commercial tenant, don’t assume the redemption right or a pre-suit notice period will bail you out the way it might in a residential tenancy; negotiate for a notice-and-cure clause directly, and read the redemption language in your lease as if the 4-3 split will someday go the other way, because for now, it’s the only thing standing between a missed payment and losing the space for good.
Footnotes
[1] Levin Gann PA, “Maryland Supreme Court Clarifies Key Principles for Commercial Lease Enforcement” — summary of Kapneck 14-16, LLC v. Bkeezy’s Speakeasy, LLC, 2026 WL 1158049 (Md. April 29, 2026), including the redemption-waiver holding, the “Parties are free to allocate rights and remedies by contract” language, and the notice-of-charge standard for Additional Rent. https://www.levingann.com/maryland-supreme-court-clarifies-key-principles-for-commercial-lease-enforcement/
[2] Mortgage Professional America, “Maryland court blocks commercial landlords from springing surprise eviction charges” — the 4-3 vote split on redemption waiver, the dissent’s call for legislative action, the $16,240.30 claimed balance, and the finding that late fees were logged inconsistently with entries appearing the day before trial. https://www.mpamag.com/us/specialty/commercial/maryland-court-blocks-commercial-landlords-from-springing-surprise-eviction-charges/573671
[3] Maryland Code, Real Property § 8-401(c)(1) — pre-suit written notice and 10-day cure period limited to actions to recover possession of “residential premises.” https://codes.findlaw.com/md/real-property/md-code-real-prop-sect-8-401/
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