Legal Question in Business Law in California

Ordinarily at least, there's no safe way to break a lease. The landlord will generally have the right to (1) retain your deposit, and/or (2) sue the tenant for damages. There are some legal limits on the amount of damages the landlord is entitled to, because the damages are limited to losses sustained despite a realistic effort to find a replacement tenant. Perhaps if your business is a corporation or LLC and you haven't executed a personal guarantee, and the business is truly broke, there'll be no opportunity for the landlord to collect damages. It's like the old saying, "You can't get blood out of a turnip."

Leases are not intended to be 'broken', certainly not 'safely'.

If you have solid legal grounds to rescind the contract, raise them with the landlord. Negotiate the situation with him or risk being sued if you simply walk away from the lease. If serious about hiring counsel to try to help in this, feel free to contact me.

Generally, if you want to get out of a business lease, you would do that by negotiating with your landlord. It might mean that you would pay something less than the full amount for the unused portion of the lease, or it might mean you find a replacement tenant to take over the lease. If the landlord has breached the lease by not providing what was promised, you would probably need to give him notice and an opportunity to fix the problem. If you just walk away, you could be held liable for the entire amount of the lease.