As anticipated, in response to the widely unpopular holding in The Game Place, L.L.C. v. Fredericksburg 35, LLC, 813 S.E.2d 312 (Va. 2018), the governor of Virginia signed a bill on February 13, 2019 removing the previous statutory requirement that a lease of more than five (5) years contain a seal or other statutory seal substitute in order to be enforceable. The Virginia General Assembly approved House Bill 2287, which contained an emergency clause allowing the bill to take effect immediately upon execution rather than on July 1, 2019 when most bills traditionally take effect, which amended the Statute of Conveyances to remove all references to "deed of lease" and replace the same with "lease" and to delete references to seals. Additionally, the bill specifically validates any lease or document conveying a non-freehold estate in land that is in effect as of the effective date of the bill by stating that the same "shall not be invalid, unenforceable, or subject to repudiation by the parties to such agreement on account of, or otherwise affected by, the fact that the conveyance of the estate was not in the form of a deed." The bill was introduced in response to the Supreme Court of Virginia unanimously holding a 15-year commercial lease unenforceable due to the fact that it was not executed with the formalities of a deed as previously required under Virginia law. As a result, the bill will allow many landlords (and tenants) to breathe a sigh of relief that the leases that they have operated under for so many years are in fact valid and enforceable.
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