Naked landlord doesn’t justify reduced rent: German court

He’s allowed to bare it all.

A German court on Wednesday decided that a landlord with a penchant for sunbathing naked in the courtyard of his building was not a reason for his tenants to have reduced rent payments.

The sunbathing was at the center of a lawsuit filed by the landlord in Frankfurt against a human resources company that refused to pay rent for its office floor because it objected to his conduct.

The Frankfurt state court rejected the company’s reasoning, stating that “the usability of the rented property was not impaired by the plaintiff sunning himself naked in the courtyard.”

The court said in its ruling that it couldn’t see an “inadmissible, deliberately improper effect on the property” as a result of the landlord being naked on the premise.

Judges on Wednesday were ruling on an appeal against a lower court decision that went in the landlord’s favor.

In that instance, the tenant had little success pleading their case.

The court had found that the human resources company had been entitled to reduced rent rates for three months — as a result of noisy construction work taking place in the neighborhood — not because of their naked landlord.

The judge noted in the decision that the area where the landlord sunbathed could only be seen from the rented office space if someone were to lean far out of the window.

The human resources company also argued that their landlord took the stairs down to the courtyard completely nude. But as the naked truth would have it, the court said the tenant failed to prove their claim.

“On the contrary, the plaintiff stated credibly that he always wore a bathrobe which he only took off just before the sun lounger,” the court said.

With Post wires