By Christine Sloan Gillan

So today, on behalf of my customer/property owner, I reviewed an amendment to an easement agreement that was prepared by the grantee under the easement agreement who is one of the big 3 tower companies.  The amendment is meant to memorialize my customer’s consent to increasing the size of the easement area under the easement agreement so that the grantee can add more telecommunications equipment to my customer’s rooftop.  [Short lesson – an easement agreement is entered when the property owner/landlord decides to sell its cell tower lease to get one large lump sum payment in lieu of smaller monthly rent checks.  In most instances, the leased premises under the cell tower lease becomes the “easement area” under the easement agreement.]  While the amendment was meant to define the new easement area and to state the amount of the additional money that grantee will pay my customer in exchange for the enlarged easement area, the grantee decided to include additional provisions in the amendment that were never even discussed between the parties.  Most alarming was a new provision in which the parties would agree that the grantee would relocate its equipment on the rooftop if my customer ever needed to make repairs to the rooftop.  This new provision required my customer to provide the grantee with 6 months’ prior written notice of the maintenance event and required my customer to pay for all of grantee’s expenses in relocating its equipment.   This provision was alarming because the underlying lease agreement already placed an obligation on the grantee to relocate in the event of a maintenance event; however, the underlying lease only required my customer to give the grantee 60 days’ prior written notice AND required the grantee to pay its own costs to relocate the equipment!  Of course, I will suggest to my customer that it strike this new provision.  I am glad that my customer hired us to review the easement amendment, otherwise it may have relinquished rights that it was not required to relinquish -  in addition to incurring additional expense that it was not obligated to incur!