First, you—and not just the landlord— have rights under the lease that run for a full year. The apparent bullying may not be a very good tactic on their part, and also may even undermine the good faith you have used so far. While there may be a price to your not acting the way (or at the speed) that is being demanded, you still have a year’s lease. In other words, it’s unlikely (based on what you’ve said here) that you “Must” (as the landlord says) make an immediate decision. Besides, as we look at some of your apparent options, you have done one very, very good thing…

…you’ve found two good replacement tenants and apparently all on your own. As we’ll talk about, this can go to what’s called mitigation of damages. Let’s first, though, look at some of the common problems of a commercial lease in California, and the result of your possibly breaking that lease.

You discussed competing “commitments’ as the reason for breaking the lease. If you are having financial troubles, or if it’s just going to be too costly to get out of the lease, you may be under some financial pressures. Is the “nuclear” option of bankruptcy an issue? Here’s a link to a case where a commercial lease had specific language, which allowed operation by a new tenant under either foreclosure or bankruptcy. As in your case, it was not clear under the language of the original lease whether the new tenant or an original tenant was liable for past rental payments and maintenance of the property: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of-appeal/1464712.html. It’s also not clear in your case whether you are getting permission to simply be released from your lease, or if there is language in your lease allowing you to sub-rent. Be warned that many of these commercial leases also have mandatory arbitration clauses: look to see. These questions will affect what your liability is for a sub-rental’s failure to pay. Are you aware of the sub-leasing language in the lease?

In a second, I’ll give you some expert resources of where to bring that all-important lease, so that you can have an expert look over the specific language in the lease, regarding issues of sub-rent and your liability for that one year lease period.

As mentioned above, one other thing you have going for you if this goes to court or arbitration is what you have done already, referred to above as “mitigation.” Once you realized that you might have a problem keeping the lease, you showed good faith to mitigate, or lessen, harm to the owner. Be ready to document that, because even if you do breach the lease, you will want to show that you worked to lessen the period of time the property was vacant.

If you want help to understand the specific terms of the lease, and cannot afford a lawyer right now, try getting some pro bono help: http://apps.americanbar.org/legalservices/probono/directory/california.html,

or even a free review from a retired business executive for women entrepreneurs: http://www.rencenter.org/grow-your-business/legal-advice,

or try a California law school free clinic, such as California Western: http://www.cwsl.edu/main/default.asp?nav=career_services.asp&body=career....

Finally, many sloppy commercial leases forget to correctly allow for replacement of tenants. Or the language may be confusing. That’s why any bullying of you by the landlord’s attorney makes very little sense. It may even harm the property owner when it comes to keeping or replacing you as a tenant. Be sure to keep any behavior, which may harm your commercial activities, extremely well documented: time of the comments, who made the comments (such as the landlord’s lawyer) duration of the conversations, and precise wording. You might need to fight back by showing the lease freely allowed sub-rental, and that the landlord/owner interfered with your right and business opportunity to (I hope) reasonably make that assignment.