Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California
Lease Expiration
I signed a year lease with a roommate. On the lease it states that the lease is from 8/30/02 until 8/31/02. Both the tenant(me) and the landlord understand that the lease was supposed to be until 8/31/03. The landlord does not know of the typo yet. If I would like to break the lease, could I?
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: Lease Expiration
The law regarding typographical errors in instruments such as leases favors judicial correction of them, if they are clearly what the law calls "scrivener's errors." A scrivener is someone in the role of a clerk or stenographer who is employed to write down the results of a negotiation but does not participate as a principal.
Further, Civil Code section 1640 provides "When, through fraud, mistake, or accident, a written contract fails to express the real intention of the parties, such intention is to be regarded, and the erroneous parts of the writing disregarded."
Since a one-day lease is highly improbable, a court would doubtless enforce the lease as a one-year lease (or year-and-a-day lease) and disregard the error.
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