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Scott M. Toussaint – Special Counsel
Biography
Scott is a lawyer with the firm’s Real Estate Group. He provides counsel to private individuals and businesses that own, occupy, rent, option, acquire, sell, finance, construct and develop real property. He has been an attorney with the firm since 1998 and has nearly 10 years of California real estate law experience.
Representative Transactions:
- Commercial Lease Workouts: Scott has assisted numerous commercial landlords with the development and documentation of lease workout strategies to resolve problem tenancies without resort to eviction or lawsuits. In one situation, a client received a multi-million dollar buyout in exchange for an accelerated lease termination. Other situations have been resolved by such means as rent deferral, rent restructuring, and simultaneous lease termination-and-assignment. Scott has helped these landlord clients work through important contingencies such as post-deferral defaults and preferential payment treatment in bankruptcy.
- "Synthetic Subleasing": Scott worked closely with a corporate client's in-house counsel and real estate manager to negotiate and document a sublease agreement in a situation where the client was the tenant under a synthetic lease. This complex transaction involved close coordination with the lender's counsel to accommodate the lender's and subtenants concerns regarding the possibility of "foreclosure" by the lender. Notwithstanding these and other complications, including the need to transition from a single-tenant facility to a multi-tenant approach, the "synthetic sublease" reached a successful conclusion.
- Cellular Antenna Tower Leasing: On an ongoing basis, Scott has assisted the owner of a strategically-located cellular antenna site in Silicon Valley to successfully juggle his leasing arrangements in the face of maneuvering by industry participants. By carefully managing lease language and monitoring the industry, with Scott's help, the property owner has maintained a profitable antenna site leasing business while providing a valuable transmission site to grateful telecommunications carriers.
- Proposition 13; Property Taxes: On behalf of the owners of valuable Lake Tahoe real estate, Scott responded to County Assessor inquiries to demonstrate that a complex history of intra-family ownership transfers was not reassessment-triggering under the rules of Proposition 13, and that therefore the existing low base-year value of the property for tax purposes should remain.
Articles & Publications
Education
- University of California, Hasting College of Law
J.D. 1998
Third-Year Class Council - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
S.B. 1992
Varsity Baseball; All-Conference