Tenants at the Gardens at Maplewood apartment complex in EssexCounty were unpleasantly surprised when they learned that they were not entitled to a rent reduction when building services were interrupted in the wake of Super-Storm Sandy. Superior Court Judge Mahlon Fast ruled in Gardens at Maplewood v. Fowlin that the outages were “unquestionably beyond the power of the landlord to have reasonably avoided or corrected,” and that “restoration of power was within the control of the power supplier, rather than the landlord.”