After refusing a $287 repair bill, Portland renter beats his landlord in court, wins $32K verdict
The clash began after Spring refused to pay a $287 electrician's bill that his landlord forwarded him for the repair of a burnt-out socket in his unit. Shortly after, the landlord notified Spring that his rent would increase by $100 per month.
The jury awarded Spring $16,000 — an amount that Oregon law doubles to $32,000 because of the nature of the violation. On top of that, Spring's attorneys also are entitled to ask a judge to order the landlord to pay all of Spring's legal fees, an amount that currently stands at $225,000.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/refusing-287-repair-bill-portland-120107376.html?guccounter=1Open linkView original on discuss.online
84 replies
200k in legal fees? What the fuck?
Landlord probably tried to string it along to force the tenant to settle due to costs.
This is the default strategy that I have seen. Civil courts heavily favor flexing resources wih stall tactics.
Very rarely does it pay off for the smaller entity even if they do win, but it's always nice to see when it does.
Nah something weird is happening. Most s**tates don't have cost/fee shifting for small claims court and the awards can't usually be higher than 5-7k even when doubled.
It isn't small claims court
Yes the question is why.
As you pointed out, it wasn't a small claim
267 + let's be generous and say a year of rent increase at 100 is 1467. Even if it were two years of rent increase they would still be well into small claim territory. The story doesn't really say how it jumped to 16k, the penalty doubling is fairly common for certain violations so that's not surprising but the amount sure as hell is.
Many (all?) states award attorneys fees as a matter of law for specific claims. In my state, most of our tenent protection laws award tenents attorneys fees automatically if they win (along with triple damages).
Private contracts also frequently include a loser pays provision.
Additionally courts can, under their own authority, award attorneys fees if one sides does something to drag out and increase the cost of litigation; which is almost certainly how this dispute got so expensive.
For specific violations yes. We don't know what they are or how a 32k judgement that would be small claims ended up on circuit court with 230k of legal fees.
I feel like there should be a circuit-breaker that stops the money flowing past a certain point. I don't care what accounting magic you use, a few hundred bucks should never balloon to 250k.
If the landlord dragged the proceedings in order to push their tenant into being unable to sue anymore, it's perfectly reasonable for said landlord to be fully on the hook for everything. He's lucky he's not charged for the court's time as well.
And if the landlord hadn’t been such a shithead, it wouldn’t have.
Hell yeah, fuck land parasites.
Totally bogus bill. Just replace the damn outlet, you dumbasses.
Also, nearly $300 to replace an outlet? I should have been an electrician.
Thats a nominal “get out of bed” kind of quote. You dont be a tradesman and drive to someone’s house for the $25 that it actually costs to do the job.
Good point. I do nearly everything myself, so I don't normally consider time and transit...
But I'll continue doing things myself when it costs that much!
That's how I learned to install a new circuit breaker into a breaker box. Electrician quoted me $600 in labor plus parts.
I figured it was $300 an hour, he only billed full hours, and he counted his time to give me a quote.
Ended up taking me 15 minutes.
HVAC is where the money is. $1000+ for replacing a compressor coil.
You don't think the electrician doing the work got all that, do you? The company that signs his paycheck took the lion's share.
Probably fair.
I was imagining an independent contractor type of guy, but it seems
walkwall street owns everything now.where the street walking towards?
You know it's a typo because there are no streets for walking in the US.
Haha too true.
Haha.
Dude this lawyer harassed the client.
Fuck him.
They should move for sanctions next.
Disbarment is the only option and jail should follow as well.
Incredibly self-aware, isn't he?
Read the headline like "renter beats the shit out of landlord in court" like WTF, he wasn't even arrested, not only that, but was awarded $32k.
Sorry, english is not my native language.
I like your version. More tenants should beat the shit out of their landlords. America would be a better place.
English is my native language, and I read it that way too
Same. I wonder why. Is there something about the way the headline is written that causes this initial premature interpretation?
I think it's a bit of a garden path sentence, where you can pick the wrong sense of a word (beat in this case), but instead of it ending up in a confusing ungrammatical mess, the grammar works out; we only realise our mistake with more context.
So...
US is a very crazy land
Its a silly place
It's a $1.68 socket. No way the landlord didn't have a handyman replace that in 15 minutes. Handyman hourly rate ~ $50
If he called a real electrician, it would have been around $150, including a full hour of labor. Landlords who don't handle exterminators* or collect trash on the regular* don't call real electricians; he probably called his nephew, and they each take a cut.
So the guy is slumlording, which is why he got the 32k payout.
The $225k legal fee is because the renters' lawyer wants to fuck the landlord over for being a dirtbag. He'll go after him himself for the 225k, perhaps reach a lower settlement. But it sounds like the landlord wants to appeal the whole thing; he's likely going to lose, again.
The interesting part, the outlet got Hot AF on the neutral side
The alarm clock would not have been the culprit. That was a loose connection in the outlet, or its wiring, certainly not the tenant's fault.
"* FTA"
We have the same problem with Medical. You go to the hospital for an extreme migraine, they give you $200 OTC painkiller, a $300 bill each from the triage nurse, the doctor that sees you and the doctor associated with whatever tests they run. They charge the insurance company $1100, the insurance company already has an agreement with them to only pay 30%. If you don't have insurance, you can often (but not always) talk them down to a reasonable rate closer to what it actually costs them.
Jesus christ, I'm an electrician, that's 90 second job that takes $4 in parts. Who the fuck is charging $2.75 per second to change an outlet!
Your boss.
The ~$35 you get for your time is your cut.
I'd unionize.
Drive to my house and I will pay you $4
A small job like that would charge a minimum of an hour, $4 for a receptacle, $30 for a gfi. We're looking at a $150 to $200 job.
My stepdad was a self employed electrician, I went to work for him in the 90s and I remember him billing $60 for a automatic light switch in a public bathroom. I made about $0.50 doing the work. He paid me a dollar an hour and I was overpaid.
Truthfully I'm surprised they even hired out an electrician for that. General handyman can replace an outlet.
As a non-proffessional I've replaced outlets in my own house. It took me 20 minutes for the first one. Now it takes about 10, but that because I triple check everything and go slow
Unless of course you live in Quebec, where all electrical work must be done by a licensed, unionized electrician.
The odd thing is that it is still very difficult to even find an electrician. We have been waiting 10 months for someone to come and add a circuit with some outdoor lights.
I recently bought a house built in 1942. All of the receptacles dated to that time, ungrounded and with the polarity backwards for good measure. Forget about GFCI. Each room had one receptacle, with the bottom outlet of each partially blocked by baseboard radiators (which had been retrofitted later). I'm glad I never got to see the viper's den of extension cords that prior tenants must have had going. I'm surprised that in 80 years nobody ever swapped in a modern receptacle since it's not that hard to do.
The truck roll is the expensive part.
Office expenses and office staff, too. I worked for a particular industry that used software that we plugged in monthly expenses, annual, and semiannual, including payroll, and it gave us back prices for individual screws that would bug your eyes from your head to also cover a nominal profit (about 15%), and unexpected expenses like insurance rate hikes for liability insurance, workers' comp, broken equipment, etc. So that $0.30 screw suddenly became $6.
Honestly crazy that an old blown neutral ended up a $32k+ lawsuit.
A local mechanic wanted $25 for an oil change, after I bought the oil and filters. I ended up taking it to the other shop and getting a fully synthetic change for $7 less than the local guy, if I had purchased conventional oil, and that's not including disposal cost.
$25 seems entirely fair for that
but it also sounds like oil changes are incredibly cheap where you are. a cheap synthetic change around here is $70
I can’t even do one myself for $25! Oil is usually right at 40$, plus the filter is 5-10$. And that’s on a domestic, my VW is even worse!
yeah oil changes are one thing I usually wouldn't bother to do myself. I can't get it done meaningfully cheaper by myself, as my costs are the same as you - $50 for oil + filter. at least disposal is free for me (hazardous waste dropoffs hosted by the city / tax dollars).
however I did start doing them myself to avoid having to spend time getting to/from the shop, if I needed a change and my car wasn't going to the shop for another reason sometime soon.
It's a 10 minute job, 15 at most. If I'd had ramps and my tools that were stolen, I would have done it myself. So I paid less, got a name brand oil and filter without having to shop for it, no disposal fee, for a 20 minute drive. I also had an appointment and was in and out in about 20 minutes, including talking with the shop owner, their family, and the shop fur babies, which my own fur baby got to enjoy.
15 minute job, plus talking to you, doing the books, having the bay taken up, having the tools and equipment...
people deserve to be paid for their work
Nah, this is a backyard guy.
ah, that makes a lot more sense then
Especially when a shop with liability insurance and overhead provides everything, with a better product, for less.
So he doesn't deserve to get paid for his work... The fuck is wrong with you.
Like most people, budgetary constraints.
Cheap ass
When you pay my regular bills, I won't be.
Landlords are scum.
Hahaha
Landlord and property managers are such idiots.
Judges don't like them, let's be clear. Judges will only side with them of they absolutely have to.
Remember, judges have family and friends themselves with these asshats too, plus judges see them in their courts all the time.
I hope on appeal they get hit even harder.
Depends on the judges. The county I grew up in was notorious for having republican leaning judges that almost always sided with the landlords.
County made a point to make sure landlords could evict as fast as legally possible.
Knew a few people that owned some apartments. The only credit I can give them is they bought raw land and built them themselves so they didn't just buy up existing housing supply. But yeah, I've heard their stories on the court's efficiency
It's like that where I live, too.
$225,000 to take a landlord to court. Lawyers suck.
This could have been completely avoided if landlords didn't suck way more.
Its very expensive to become an attorney from all the initial education (aka, repaying student loans). Add on to that the malpractice insurance, the licensing fees (fee for test + new license + maintain license), the continuing education costs, fees related to document discovery (ever try going through 200k documents by yourself?), the researching fees (lexis/west law/bloomberg), the filing fees to submit filings to the court/regulating body, the fees to access the docketing portals, and the costs related to hiring employees to help (the secretary, the paralegal, the receptionist, etc), and the regular office supplies (paper, electricity, rent, binders, etc.), then it starts to make sense why attorneys fees add up.
Oh please fuck off. This is a locked and overpaid profession.
You don't think there could be a million people with the same argument about whatever your vocation is?
Oh, so just a select group of wealth has the birth right to do all that's necessary to take the bar exam and become an attorney? Theres no such thing as the professional responsibility to provide legal aid to the indigent? The 6th Amendment doesn't guaruntee counsel, even to those who cannot afford it? There's no such thing as the Miranda warning specifically giving counsel to the indigent?
I'm guessing the lawyer set the fee that high just to fuck with the landlord who will have to pay it, and they probably will settle with him on a lower amount rather than going through the hassle of trying to collect that fee.
Pretty crazy story. But the judges are right: The landlord basically took revenge for the renter to seek help in the legal system by rising the rent and such behavior needs to be very strongly discouraged.
I don't see how else to deter other landlords from doing the same. The consequences have to be dire to deter behavior which is rather unlikely to make it into a courtroom because most people don't sue.
Won't stop them. They'll just raise the rent on other tenants to pay for it and go on being slumlords.
The electrician did a piss poor job, the slotted head should be vertical.
In court... NOOOO!
Imagine getting 225k into legal debt over an outlet... This is why justice is effectively dead in America. Even the most minor of legal issues run such vast sums to dispute, it would've saved everyone money, time, and life for either party to have just caved. 🫠
Wow legal fees of $225k. Maybe don’t lawyer up next time.
I’ve beaten landlords in court on my own. Lawyering up isn’t always necessary, despite what some commentors seem to think. Research your own states renters rights before you do anything in court on your own.
And you didn't get them to pay $225k in legal fees when you did, either. If your case is airtight and your state allows/requires legal fee repayment by the losing party, lawyer up.
But I did win 4x what I was owed. So you do you moneybags.
Most people renting can’t afford lawyer bills like that.
Seems like you just want to argue. Have fun with that.
The lawyers probably worked on contingency, expecting to win against a well insured corporate landlord. You cant simply rack up that much without a way to pay. Why would the lawyers do that? They know it would be impossible to collect if they lose.
LOL, I wish I could afford that. Have you never heard of lawyers that work on contingency?