Tenants seeking a rent break for building services interrupted by Hurricane Sandy got bad news Monday as an Essex County judge ruled the outages were “unquestionably beyond the power of the landlord to have reasonably avoided or corrected.”

“Restoration of power was within the control of the power supplier, rather than the landlord,” Superior Court Judge Mahlon Fast said, denying a rent abatement in Gardens at Maplewood v. Fowlin, ESS LT 5240-13.