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A lessee may terminate a lease agreement if a hidden defect, that was not disclose to him, was discovered and it interferes the use

March 4, 2021
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A lessee terminated a lease agreement after discovering that there was an unusual and prolonged radiation problem in the apartment that was known to the lessors and was not disclosed to him.
The Court accepted the lessee's claim and held that it was entitled to terminate the agreement as it is the responsibility of a lessor, who knows about a hidden defect in the apartment, to fully disclose it before renting the apartment to the lessee. The lessor has a duty to repair defects in the leased apartment if it is a defect that causes a real disturbance to the normal use of the lessee or to its use according to what is agreed between him and the lessee. Also, an apartment that poses an unreasonable risk to the lessee's safety or its health is not considered a habitable apartment. Here, the major radiation problem in the apartment was not disclosed to the lessee before the signing of the lease agreement, even though the lessors were well aware of its existence and refrained from fixing it. In this case, not only was due disclosure not made and therefore it is unreasonable to expect a lessee to locate the radiation problem in the apartment himself, but this was a repair that is under the responsibility of the lessors and as they failed to do, thus breaching the agreement. Therefore, in these circumstances the lessee was entitled to terminate the agreement as he could not be held hostage as long as there was a material and hidden defect in the apartment which had he known about its existence beforehand he might not have rented the property in the first place.