Did you know that it’s trespass to fail to remove a billboard when your lease expires? That’s the point of Loukas v Clear Channel Outdoor.
- Clear Channel Outdoor leased a billboard in Chicago from Loukas, Inc from 1990 to 2012.
- In 2012 the lease expired.
- Clear Channel Outoor refused to remove the billboard and the billboard’s 30 foot deep footings claiming that it owned the sign but that the lease did not specifically say that it had to remove the sign at the end of the lease.
- Loukas sued for relief.
- Judge Milton Shadur of the United Stated District Court for the North District of Illinois ruled that Loukas had terminated consent to retain the billboard and its substructure on the premises and Clear Channel Outdoor was a trespasser under the law. The Judge quoted this passage from Torts law:
A trespass may be committed by the continued presence on the land of a structure, chattel, or other thing which the actor or his predecessor in legal interest has placed on the land: (a) with the consent of the person then in possession of the land, if the actor fails to remove it after the consent has been effectively terminated…
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