Goodenough

Plaintiff Court House Plaza Company (Court House Plaza) appeals from a judgment entered after the trial court granted a motion for summary judgment brought by defendants Dores Goodenough, Morton Rothman, Felice Shatz, and Arline Marchi (lessors). Court House Plaza had sued lessors for breach of contract, specific performance, and declaratory relief. The trial court ruled that Court House Plaza had failed to create a triable issue of fact that it was a third party beneficiary under the lease at issue, and thus had no standing to sue lessors for breach of contract and was not entitled to specific performance or declaratory relief.

On appeal Court House Plaza argues that it has standing to enforce the lease provision barring lessors from unreasonably withholding consent to assignment of the lease. We disagree, and will therefore affirm.

On March 2, 1992, lessors entered into a 10-year commercial lease with Mercer Processing, Inc., and James Mercer (Mercer or lessee) through February 28, 2002, for warehouse property at 195 Page Mill Road in Palo Alto (the premises). [1] The premises were to be used and occupied only for food processing and related operations. The…