In this current specialist article, our property experts Jan Lindner-Figura and Silvio Sittner present important supreme court judgements of the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in the area of commercial tenancy law.

Particular attention is paid to decisions of the XIIth and XIIIth Civil Senate, which deal, among other things, with the landlord's right to inspect rented premises, the validity of an extraordinary termination without notice for good cause, the gathering of evidence in the event of rental defects, or the additional costs for a replacement property in the event of the failure of a rental agreement.

On the future of the written form requirement for tenancy agreements, the authors examine the draft bill published by the Federal Ministry of Justice (BMJ) on 11 January 2024 for a "Fourth Act to Reduce Bureaucracy for Citizens, Business and the Administration" (Viertes Bürokratieentlastungsgesetz, BEG-IV-E for short) and classify the reform plans.

This article ties in with the ongoing NJW reporting (most recently NJW 2023, 1027).
 

[Note from the authors: After publication of the article in the NJW, the government draft of the BEG-IV-E was published, which - probably against the background of the concerns also expressed in the article - submits a structurally completely new proposal for dealing with the written form].