“It was once widely believed that every adult citizen of the United States could remember where they were and what they were doing at the time they were told of the assassination of President Kennedy.” So begins Justice Brian O’Moore’s judgment on US sportswear giant Foot Locker’s bid for Covid-19 rent relief that sets a strong marker about the direction the courts are going when it comes to pandemic-related commercial rent disputes. While the judge concludes that a “similar phenomenon of collective memory” may not have been triggered by former taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s Washington DC address in March 2020 on…