The "stupid kung fu" in the complex lease contract dispute is the key to winning the case!
Author | Attorney Zhang Cuiyan
When our legal team took on this lease dispute, we were confronted with over a decade of performance records—multiple renewed lease agreements, three adjustments to the rental rates, transactions involving numerous bank cards and WeChat accounts, and hundreds of individual bank statements and payment vouchers scattered across various documents. Because the other party failed to pay the rent on the agreed-upon date and in the agreed-upon amount, and also included several other miscellaneous charges, the party involved initially was unable to accurately calculate the exact amount of rent owed.
The legal relationship appears straightforward—a dispute over a residential lease agreement, with the primary claim being unpaid rent. However, the task of sorting out the facts proved far more challenging than anticipated: the parties dispute the terms governing rent adjustments; some shops were vacated midway and subsequently re-let, resulting in gaps in the lease periods; WeChat transfer remarks are incomplete, making it impossible to directly match several payments with the corresponding monthly rent; moreover, with payment cycles spanning over a decade, the risk of a statute-of-limitations defense cannot be overlooked.
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Step 1: Reconstruct the basic facts.
Our legal team has decided to forgo the statistical table provided by the client and instead reconstruct the data item by item based on the original evidence. Using the timeline as the vertical axis and the contract number as the horizontal axis, enter the lease term, rental rate, payment method, and security deposit offset terms for each contract one by one. Subsequently, more than one hundred bank transaction records and WeChat transfers were subjected to a “triple verification” process—verifying the amounts, dates, and remarks. For transactions without remarks, their attribution was inferred by cross-referencing with preceding and subsequent chat logs and payment patterns.
After several days of cross-validation, we have finalized the “Rental Income and Expenditure Details Statement,” which standardizes all accounting records across seven dimensions: year and month, contract‑specific period, accounts receivable rent, actual rent received, difference, and collection records.
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Step 2: Organization of Evidence and Application of Law
Of course, completing the accounting statement is not merely an arithmetic matter; it also involves the formalization of legal requirements. The attorneys on our team have compiled all evidence related to the timing and methods of debt collection, the lease term corresponding to each outstanding payment, and the dates associated with each collection record— including written correspondence, WeChat messages, and telephone recordings—thereby establishing a comprehensive chain of evidence regarding the interruption of the statute of limitations and the outstanding rental arrears.
During the trial, the opposing party attempted to undermine the judge’s conviction by arguing that the accounting records were disorganized, the specific amounts were questionable, and that the rental amount had been adjusted. However, the calculation sheets and relevant payment vouchers, chat records, audio recordings, and other evidence submitted by our side serve to corroborate this. In accordance with the principle of “he who asserts must prove” as stipulated in the Civil Procedure Law, our party has fulfilled its burden of proof regarding the existence of the outstanding debt and the specific amount thereof; if the opposing party claims that the debt has been paid in full or in part, it shall bear the corresponding burden of proof.
At the conclusion of the trial, the opposing party failed to present any rebuttal evidence regarding any of the disputed amounts.
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Step 3: Judgment and Reflection
The process was challenging, but fortunately, we achieved a favorable outcome. The court’s judgment largely upheld our claims, with the phrase “the evidence is sufficient and the reasoning is clear; this court accepts it” appearing rather casual, yet it actually reflects the countless days of hard work and dedication by our lawyers.
After the case was closed, I often reflected that the key to winning it lay not in sophisticated legal application, but in the most fundamental ability to organize and present the facts.When evidence is fragmented and the parties’ accounts are confused, the lawyer’s primary duty is to return to the original evidence and, by means of professional methods, reconstruct the factual framework. A precise accounting statement and a complete chain of evidence are far more persuasive than on-the-spot improvisation during a trial.
Behind every victorious judgment lies countless hours of painstaking deliberation in the dead of night. The numbers that were repeatedly cross-checked, the chat records that were individually verified, and the debt-collection timestamps that were meticulously annotated—all ultimately became the grounds for acceptance cited in the judgment—this is precisely the silent testament to the professional value of a lawyer.
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Introduction
Attorney Zhang Cuiyan
Zhiheng (Foshan) Law Firm
Deputy Director of the Foshan Management Committee of Zhiheng
Director of the Corporate Compliance Legal Affairs Department, Zhiheng Foshan
Zhiheng FoshanDirector of the Women Lawyers’ Working Committee
Ph.D. candidate at the University of Liège in Belgium
Master’s student in Civil and Commercial Law, South China Normal University
Lawyer in the Guangdong Province Pool of Emerging Talents for Foreign-Related Legal Practice
Guangdong Provincial Lawyers Association Trust and Wealth Management Law
Member of the Professional Committee
Financial, Securities, and Capital Markets Law of the Foshan Lawyers Association
Deputy Director of the Professional Committee
Member of the Rules and Regulations Committee of the Foshan Lawyers Association
Member of the Mediation Center of the China Association of Small and Medium Enterprises
Member of the Foshan Private Enterprise Lawyers’ Volunteer Service Group
Arbitrator of the Shanwei Arbitration Commission
Member of the Foshan Municipal Volunteer Legal Service Group for Foreign-related Commercial Matters
Holds an intermediate-level economist certification and a banking professional qualification.
Securities Practitioner Qualification, Fund Practitioner Qualification
Attorney Zhang Cuiyan specializes in economic disputes such as contract disputes, equity controversies, and non-performing asset disposals. She is adept at handling complex and challenging civil, commercial, and mixed civil-criminal cases, including corporate compliance, legal risk prevention, family and marital matters, wealth succession, non-litigation mediation, and cross-border legal services.
Some of its notable cases include successfully representing a client in recovering part of a 340 million yuan enforcement claim through bankruptcy proceedings, recovering two long‑outstanding claims totaling 200 million and 400 million yuan for a commercial bank, counterclaiming against a major engineering company to recover nearly 3 million yuan, shielding a client from full liability for investment losses in a shareholding proxy dispute, exonerating a defendant in a private lending case involving over 10 million yuan, employing a criminal–civil–administrative cross‑jurisdictional strategy to save a debtor nearly 10 million yuan in losses, successfully applying for and enforcing a civil judgment of over 30 million yuan rendered by the Macao Special Administrative Region court, and, in a divorce case, uncovering the other party’s concealed assets and securing an additional 2.5 million yuan in compensation for the client. The firm has been repeatedly honored with the title of “Outstanding Lawyer.”
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