68 Am. U. L. Rev. F. 91 (2019).

* Editor-in-Chief, American University Law Review, Volume 69; J.D. Candidate, May 2020, American University Washington College of Law; B.A., English and Environmental Studies, 2015, Williams College.  I would like to thank the entire Law Review editorial team for their dedicated efforts preparing this piece for publication.  I would also like to thank my faculty advisor, Professor Bill Snape, for his unwavering support and guidance throughout the drafting process.  Finally, I would like to thank my family.  It is with their unconditional love and support that I have been able to pursue and achieve my academic and professional goals.

Rising global temperatures have caused hurricanes to grow in size, intensity, and frequency.  For many coastal cities, hurricanes have become an expected or customary event.  In 2017, Hurricane Harvey hit the Texas coast and decimated communities.  A year later, Hurricane Florence made landfall in North Carolina, leaving similar damage in its wake.  The list goes on:  Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Ivan, Hurricane Charley are other storms in recent history that have had devastating impacts on communities in New Jersey, Florida, and Louisiana.  Followingthese catastrophic storms, it is often those who rent who are most impacted.  Renters’ homes have been damaged, some made inhabitable, and yet, landlords have refused to maintain or repair the properties.

In property law, there has traditionally been no tenant-oriented remedy mitigating damage caused by a natural disaster.  Instead, landlords have looked to the act of God defense, a tool that eliminates obligations under a contract where a sudden and unexpected force outside the landlord’s control makes the landlord’s responsibility under the lease impossible. At stake in a lease, however, is more than just contractual obligations shared by a landlord and tenant.  At stake is also a tenant’s recognized property right:  the right to use and enjoy a premise for temporary duration.  In recent years, climate change and the increased frequency and severity of hurricanes has disheveled the landlord-tenant relationship.  These changed circumstances have created an imbalance that property doctrines, once shaped to incite a more equitable transaction between landlord and tenant, have failed to address.  This Comment argues that doctrines such as the implied warranty of habitability and the covenant of quiet enjoyment do, in fact, extend to damage caused by hurricanes.  Further, because many communities have grown to expect hurricanes, an event to which landlords are on notice, landlords may no longer raise the act of God defense and avoid liability.

Property law best protects individuals’ rights when external influences are stable.  Climate change has disrupted that stability and placed many individuals’ property rights at risk.  By recognizing anthropogenic climate change and its impacts on communities as the new reality, property doctrines are better equipped to safeguard the carefully calibrated rights derived from a landlord-tenant relationship.