The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

The problem for the landlord is that it is now on notice that this tenant has an ex-boyfriend who has a tendancy to enter the property and engage in gunplay.

If the woman were to stay in the apartment, and the boyfriend were to come back and somehow injure someone (perhaps a neighbor)-- I wonder whether the landlord might be held liable for failing to provide proper security to mitigate a known risk.

I agree that the landlord here is being unbelieveably crass and insensitive-- but I do wonder whether the law potentially puts the landlord into a double bind here.

That said, I suspect that what is really happening here is that other tenants are threatening to move if the woman stays, since they are worried about their safety. So I can see why the management company might (from a business perspective) want to have taken the action it did.

Sucks for the woman though-- she should hold up the management company under threat of a UD defense for some cash, but then move...

Mark

If this landlord could use tort liability in instances like these as a basis to evict her, any other landlord could use it as a justification to refuse to rent to her. With the attack so publicized, surely they all know about it. So not only has she been the victim of a brutal crime, but she now also faces becoming indefinitely homeless. (As does her child.)

It strikes me that such a result would violate the spirit, if not also the letter, of the fair housing laws. It also strikes me as a result that would be incredibly unjust. It is not her fault that she was a victim, and she should not be punished - through the loss of her housing - as if it were.

I agree with you that this is an incredibly unjust result for the woman...

On the other hand, I don't know that a private landlord has an obligation to be just, only to avoid descrimination based on a suspect classification.

I don't see a suspect classification here, merely one that seems to show an incredible amount of insensitivity on the part of the landlord.

If she doesn't live in a jurisdiction with a good cause eviction ordinance, I would think she's toast (especially if she's on month to month). However, as I mentioned, she should be able to hold the landlord up for some bucks since the landlord will definitely want this to go away.

Mark

She's entitled to due process. The landlord needs to give serve her with a UD if he wants her to leave (to extinguish her right in the tenancy), and she's entitled to have a jury decide her fate. So even absent a specific law addressing the situation I wouldn't necessarily say she's toast.

Unless she chooses not to put up a fight at all.

I agree that she is entitled to due process...

Landlord served eviction notice (presumably the equivilant of a thirty days notice to quit if she was on a month to month), and if she wants to challenge the eviction then she can overstay the notice and landlord can file a UD.

But the fact that she has a procedural right to challenge doesn't mean that she substantively has a UD defence (once again, assuming that there is not just cause eviction ordinance). If she is entitled to a jury, then I could certainly see a jury acting on emotion and ruling for her-- but that doesn't mean they'd be legally right.

I wonder if you would be so gung-ho to claim she has a substantive right to keep her tenancy if the facts were changed a bit: What if she was not attacked... Instead, one day, her boyfriend was visiting and got extremely drunk watching a football game. After the ref made a bad call, the boyfriend, in a drunked rage, shot the tv, put a couple of rounds in the wall, and ran from the complex screaming about the tradgedy that had befallen his team. Would you find an eviction in this case violated the fair housing act? IF not, how does it really differ from the case we are talking about from a landlord tenant perspective? Should the woman have more rights vis-a-vis her landlord because her guest attacked her, rather than the tv?

Mark

Not to mention, it seems to me that she would be strongly better off negotiating a better move time and perhaps some compenstation from the landlord now, rather than overstaying, enduring a UD proceeding, and running a likelyhood of getting a UD on her credit, which will make it virtually impossible to rent.

Mark

These posts are so remarkably ignorant.

Landlords are _required_ to evict dangerous tenants. If they don't, they face ruin from
the tort lawyers who have hijacked america.
This is such a common issue that it's included
in every how-to book for landlords.

Also, there are generally insurance, statutory, and common law requirements for the landlord to
take action when he becomes aware of something
that threatens other tenants.

But don't let me confuse anyone here with the
facts, when it's so much easier to just make
ignorant emotional pronouncements. Oh, and I
am not a landlord and never have been.