Posts tagged as:

landlord tenant law

KickEmOutQuick evictions and collections, based in Ogden, Utah [Natasha Lydon, Above the Law]

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“A gipsy family accused of making life a misery is using legal aid to fund a human rights challenge in the European courts for being evicted – from a travellers’ camp.” [Telegraph]

Well-written article about the lengthy career of one pro se litigant in Newark who has been tying up landlords and others in court for years; it took a fair bit of gumption to publish, given the tendency of many litigious persons to sue those who would expose their litigiousness to public notice. Worth careful study for the light it sheds on the difficulty our legal system so often has in bringing down the curtain on determined perennial litigants [Barry Carter, Newark Star-Ledger]

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Matthew Heller at OnPoint News has been digging further into that Chicago landlord-tenant fight that culminated in a cause celebre lawsuit over a posting on Twitter (earlier). More: Marc Randazza.

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April 28 roundup

by Walter Olson on April 28, 2009

  • Forensics gone wrong: Alabama mom spends nine months in jail after medical examiner misdiagnoses stillbirth as murder [Patrick @ Popehat]
  • Bouncer shot outside bar going after owners individually to collect $1.5 million verdict [W.V. Record]
  • “Feds Seize Assets of Companies Suspected of Hiring Illegal Aliens” [Reisinger, Corporate Counsel]
  • Dealing with compulsive-hoarder tenants who fill apartment up to the ceiling with trash can be legally tricky [San Francisco Weekly]
  • NYC has paid more than a half billion dollars over past decade to settle police misconduct suits [NY Post]
  • Los Angeles schools taking aim at state laws that make it near impossible to fire teachers [L.A. Daily News via Kaus]
  • Another parent put through mistaken-identity child-support hell, this time in Pennsylvania [Harrisburg Patriot-News via Amy Alkon] For a similar case from California, see August 7-8, 2001;
  • Disabled man finds vehicle towed, wheels himself in cold to distant lot, catches pneumonia. Liability for tow company and parking lot owner? [John Hochfelder, who also hosts Blawg Review #209 this week on a theme of remembering his father, a veteran of the WWII battle of Iwo Jima]

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Readers may remember Cyrus Sanai as the litigant with the big grudge against Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski who proceeded to launch a campaign trying to destroy Kozinski’s career (with some help from the Los Angeles Times). Now a California appeals court has issued the latest ruling in Sanai’s decade-long dispute with the owner of a Newport Beach apartment he once rented. Shaun Martin at California Appellate Report has details on the ruling, which sends the fight back to the lower courts. Martin calls it “a tale of litigation run amok. A tale that explains, in part, why some people hate lawyers; and, in particular, engaging in transactions with them.”

P.S. Sanai, in our comments section, says we’re wrong: for one thing, we described him as having sued the owner of the apartment he once rented when in fact “the complaint at issue is against UDR’s successor in interest, First Advantage Corporation, and UDR’s owner, Harvey Saltz”.

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Note that the proposal here is not to provide free lawyers in cases where careful case-screening establishes a fair argument that the eviction is in some way legally wrongful or unjustified. It’s to use taxpayer money to make sure that tenants who’ve trashed the apartment or stiffed the landlord on months of rent are also assigned a lawyer who will predictably use all the procedural leverage available to stall things out further, extract a payment as a condition for the tenant’s leaving, and so forth. NYU’s Brennan Center is pushing the scheme, which has 22 sponsors on the New York City council. (Manny Fernandez, “Free Legal Aid Sought for Elderly Tenants”, New York Times, Nov. 16). For more about “Civil Gideon” schemes, see this post (scroll) and this one (David Giacalone: “Attorney Employment Assurance Plan”).

P.S.: To clarify matters: for now, the program would apply to elderly tenants (which doesn’t mean all the occupants of the apartment will necessarily be elderly).

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