Overlawyered » landlord tenant law

Advocacy funding the Gotham way

Walter Olson — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 12:49:45 +0000

A Bronx nonprofit that’s gotten $240,000 from taxpayers teaches followers how to squat in city buildings. “It’s breaking and entering for dummies.” [NYPost]

Tags: landlord tenant law, NYC, real estate

Advocacy funding the Gotham way is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Annals of tasteful legal marketing

Walter Olson — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 05:41:08 +0000

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

Tags: chasing clients, landlord tenant law

Annals of tasteful legal marketing is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

UK: “Evicted gipsies launch human rights claim”

Walter Olson — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 14:16:43 +0000

“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]

Tags: international human rights, landlord tenant law, legal services programs, United Kingdom

UK: “Evicted gipsies launch human rights claim” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Perennial litigant cuts wide swath among Newark landlords

Walter Olson — Tue, 17 May 2011 05:15:52 +0000

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]

Tags: landlord tenant law, New Jersey, serial litigants

Perennial litigant cuts wide swath among Newark landlords is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Landlord vs. twittering tenant, cont’d

Walter Olson — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 04:06:06 +0000

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.

Tags: Chicago, landlord tenant law, Twitter

Landlord vs. twittering tenant, cont’d is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

April 28 roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 04:10:29 +0000

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]

Tags: child support, expert witnesses, immigration law, landlord tenant law, NYC, Pennsylvania, police, workplace

April 28 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Kozinski grudge-match litigant, cont’d

Walter Olson — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:18:16 +0000

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”.

Tags: Alex Kozinski, debtor-creditor law, landlord tenant law, lawyers

Kozinski grudge-match litigant, cont’d is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

NYC council: poor tenants should have eviction lawyers

Walter Olson — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 00:13:47 +0000

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).

Tags: civil gideon, landlord tenant law, NYC

NYC council: poor tenants should have eviction lawyers is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system