California Cannabis Leases: Remediation Indemnification is Key

For California landlords leasing to cannabis businesses, we’ve previously discussed how compliance with state and local law, perhaps even more so than the specter of federal enforcement, should be a top concern when structuring the tenancy and drafting the lease. As the state ramps up its efforts to transition the industry to a robust regulatory regime, one result of those efforts that is playing out across the state is that cultivator tenants, particularly outdoor grows, are abandoning their cultivation operations rather than paying for cleanup or dealing with state or local enforcement actions.

Sometimes this is due to a lack of wherewithal to become a licensed operation and pay the costs of compliance. Other times it’s due to a change in local law that renders the operation a nonconforming use. And still other times it’s the result of a private or government-initiated nuisance action (although these actions can sometimes create other problems). But the result is often the same: The property is left abandoned and trashed, cannabis growing material such as dangerous fertilizers are left spread across the site, and, often, illegal stream diversions or alterations have been illegally constructed, posing a threat to wildlife, water quality, and natural water drainage systems. The result is an environmental disaster and a landlord left holding the bag, often with a hefty administrative fine or nuisance abatement assessment to boot. Below are some of the many considerations that should go into structuring a cannabis lease when it comes to preventing these types of situations from happening in the first place.

1. Reviewing tenant SOPs as part of the vetting process. Before even putting pen to paper on a lease, landlords should consider requiring potential tenants to produce their standard operating procedures (SOPs) and other relevant cultivation planning documents to demonstrate what materials they will be using to cultivate, where they will be obtaining their water, how they will be disposing of waste, and how the site layout will be organized. Much of this information will have to be provided to local and state agencies anyways in order for the tenant to obtain its cultivation licenses and permits. The lease can also include tenant obligations to list all hazardous materials it intends to use at the site and to provide material safety data sheets (MSDS) for each. If the tenant doesn’t have a proper site use plan in place before they sign a lease, then chances are things will not end well for the landlord.
2. Maintaining strict control over tenant improvements in the lease and allowing for discretionary inspection. Commercial cannabis is a strictly regulated industry (for good reason), and the lease should afford similar control for the landlord over how a tenant uses the leased premises. Indoor cultivation leases may require discretionary landlord approval at multiple stages for any alterations to the building, and outdoor cultivation leases may also require the same level of approval for changes to the land, however insignificant. The lease can give teeth to these restrictions by allowing for landlord and government inspections, and affording the landlord early termination options for a tenant’s failure to comply.
3. Including strong tenant indemnifications for remediation. Indemnity clauses provide a guaranty that a tenant will hold the landlord harmless and defend it against certain types of claims. A common such clause pertains to remediation of hazardous substances on site, where the tenant promises to pay for any costs associated with spills or contamination. Cannabis cultivation leases can add to that by including cleanup costs for any damages caused or messes left behind by cultivation operations, and defense costs for any governmental remediation actions or private nuisance actions requiring abatement.
4. Including early termination options for government enforcement actions and third-party lawsuits. If the government or a private actor sues the landlord or the tenant because the tenant is causing a nuisance by creating a mess (and not just by conducting the permitted use—another example of a carve-out that tenants will want to include), the landlord will want to be able to abate the problem quickly by terminating the tenancy and enforcing the tenant’s indemnity obligations. To that end, the lease can include a landlord early termination option to end the tenancy and evict the tenant on short notice, should the landlord opt not to deal with convincing the tenant to comply.
5. Adjusting the security deposit to the size of the cultivation operation. While commercial security deposits are normally one or two months’ rent, there’s nothing requiring them to be. Because the stakes for noncompliance are so high in this industry, landlords may consider upping the deposit to an amount sufficient to properly deal with a cleanup of the tenant’s operation, should tenant fail to comply and abandon the premises. The lease can also be written so that the security deposit essentially acts as a bond for performance of the indemnification obligations, though in California there are necessary statutory waivers to be included in the lease.

California is serious about dragging its cannabis industry into regulatory compliance, and that includes a lot of cultivation site cleanup and forward-looking maintenance. California is also extremely serious about compliance with its environmental laws, as the world already knows, and we are fortunate for that. Landlords should be aware of the consequences of the leased premises turning into a nuisance or environmental violation, and consider how to build the tenancy to protect against such problems from the get-go by drafting a proper lease agreement. When everyone’s on the same page about strict compliance and good environmental stewardship, everybody wins.