Going to court - what do we need to know?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My fiance and I are taking our landlord to court. In the last year that we’ve lived here we’ve had:

5 floods in the bedroom closet
4 floods in the kitchen/linen closet
2 floods in the bathroom ceiling
2 different floods from the heat pipes in our ceiling
2 bouts of mold in the kitchen/linen closet
2 bouts of mold in the bedroom closet
3 bouts of mold in the bathroom
6 days with blasting heat (which we can’t control) in the month of June
An illegal lock on our fire escape door
The ceiling collapsed on top of me during one of the above floods and broke my camera while I was trying to take pictures of the damages

On top of all of this our landlord does not answer our calls. Ever. He has switched management companies 3 times in a year and the most recent company doesn’t have an emergency answering service or even a voicemail box where we can leave a message to let them know something is wrong.

Last week my fiance went to the courthouse and filed suit against him in housing court and on Tuesday we take our case to a judge. We have pictures of the damage from most of the above incidents. We have inspections from the city citing the illegal lock and mold issues from April of this year that he never addressed. We have phone records showing all the times we tried to call and no one called us back. We have records of every complaint we have filed with 311 against the landlord. We feel like we are pretty well prepared for this case and we are hoping that the judge will allow us to leave the apartment due to the warranty of habitability clause written into our lease.

Unfortunately the day we filed against our landlord he showed up at our apartment and started fixing stuff. He sent people to clear out the mold. He had the ceiling repaired to prevent flooding (but it didn’t work the first 4 times so I don’t think it will work this time either) and started making repairs to the outside of the building as well. By Tuesday he will have done an enormous amount to fix these problems and we are terrified that a judge will look at that and say that because he is making an effort we aren’t allowed to break our lease. He did not give a tinker’s damn until he found out he was being taken to court and I know without a doubt that Tuesday will be the last day we ever see or hear from our landlord again no matter what happens in our apartment. If we lose this and are forced to live out the length of our lease we will not see another repair done again and we will have to start sending our rent certified mail so he can’t say he never got the check and evict us.

We’ve never been to housing court before and we have no idea what to expect. Has anyone here ever been through this kind of thing before? Are we missing anything we will need to bring to the judge? What should we expect our landlord to say when he gets to say his share to the judge and do we get a chance for rebuttal?

FWIW, we are in NYC and going to the city housing court. We are halfway through a 2 year lease we were convinced to sign by the apartment finder who put us in this death trap in the first place. NYC doesn’t have lawyers for housing court, both parties just go and present their case as best as they can and a judge presides over the case with no jury. We had considered just moving and giving the landlord written notice we were leaving (as is stipulated in some law somewhere) but we know if we had done that and gotten taken to court our odds of winning the case would have gone down dramatically so we decided to stay and take him to court instead.

2

NO experience with housing court, but I will keep my fingers crossed that the Judge sees it your way.

Some suggestions. This is what I do if I have to go to small claims court (very similar, no lawyers etc)
Since you are not married, make sure the person that signed the lease is present, or you might lose on a technicality.
Write out what you want to say Stick to the facts. Date, time, incident, picture. Lather rinse, repeat. Show the pictures one at a time as they come up in your narrative.
Practice it out loud. If you can find someone you can practice it on (that does not know the case) do so and ask if it makes sense. Hell, if you can’t find anybody, send it to me and I will read it.
In any event practice it out loud. Several times until you sound natural delivering it.
Type up a summary page of all the events in chronological order (include repair attempts). Present this to the Judge at the end of your case.
Thank the Judge for his time. (Thank you, Your Honor)
When you have it in final form, change the font to 18 and print it. You want to be able to look down and see where you are, not have to squint and hold the paper to your face. (all the more reason to practice out loud.)
From what I have seen in small claims court the best prepared side wins most of the time. So be the best prepared side. In fact what often happens is not one side wins, but the other side loses their case. So don’t lose.
Once again, good luck!
Rick
ETA Silence is often the best tactic. If the other side says something crazy, just keep your mouth shut until it is your turn to speak (Judges HATE people who interrupt)

3

State the facts and what you want. Document damages if that’s the case and state that you want out of the lease at such and such time. I think you have a lock on it with all your preparation.

4

I’ve represented clients in landlord-tenant court before, arguing for both sides (landlords and tenants). You’re not in my jurisdiction, so procedures may vary, and my remarks will be necessarily general.

– Know what you’re asking for (e.g. to get out of the lease, to be repaid for any repairs you made, to get a rent rebate), and argue towards that goal. Stay on point and avoid heading off on tangents.

– If the landlord heads off on a tangent, let him. It won’t do his case any good. The judge will see this, and pull him back on track. If you need to, make a note of the tangent; then when it’s your turn, address the issue and speak to why it is irrelevant.

– Resist the temptation to rebut the landlord as he speaks. You will get your chance to rebut his points. Take a pad and pen, and make notes of the points you wish to rebut when it’s your turn.

– The judge is impartial. You may well feel you’ve been wronged and the landlord is a smug bastard, but the judge will see you each equally during the argument. In other words, the judge will not be on your side, but neither will the judge be on the landlord’s–but sometimes, it will seem like it. Stay calm and collected at all times.

– If you get the chance to ask questions directly of the landlord; again, stay on point. Do not let the landlord take you off-point, nor let him start asking questions of you–this is your turn to ask, and his turn to answer. (I had a landlord start firing questions at me from the witness stand; the judge tried to hide a smile when I had had enough and said to the landlord, “Sir, my job today is to ask questions and yours is to answer them. Let’s stick to that arrangement, shall we?”)

– Similarly, know that if you get to question the landlord, the landlord will get the chance to question you. Be prepared.

Overall, you will present an effective case if you make it clear what you want and why; answer questions accurately; and stay calm, cool, and collected at all times. Respect the Court (“Your Honor”, “Mr. Landlord”), and don’t waste the Court’s time with spurious arguments or tangential matters. And if the landlord wants to make a fool of himself, let him; do not become one yourself. Your own composure can speak volumes.

Good luck!

5

This may help calm your nerves - tenant courts tend to lean a little toward tenant rights, they have been doing this a while and know the score as far as “last minute fixes” and such.

6

You might consider using the above as evidence that the landlord’s attempts at repairs are not enough to force you to be held to the lease.

IANAL.

Regards,
Shodan

7

Agree with most of what has been posted above. Standard disclaimer: I am offering some VERY GENERAL points based on VERY GENERAL Principles. I don’t know what jurisdiction you are in. I am not your lawyer. You are not my client. I am not licensed in New York. I don’t know the details of New York housing law and there are almost certainly important principles that I don’t know and can’t tell you about.

  1. As stated above. Decide among the two of you EXACTLY WHAT YOUR GOAL IS. If there are several different possibilities, rank them in order. WRITE THIS DOWN. Many many times people go into court with a general idea that the other side is a big (*%# jerk, and they are just going to tell the judge that, and the judge is going to be outraged and throw the afforementioned jerk into leg irons and order him to pay them one million dollars and apologize on national tv. Don’t be one of these people. Decide what you want. Do you want out of your lease? Do you want an order forcing him to fix the problems? Do you want damages? Remember that generally courts are not in the business of ordering people to “go and sin no more” i.e. ordering him to be reasonable and diligent henceforth. Generally when things have gotten to this point, the best thing to do is to figure out how to walk away and be done with each other. Figure out exactly what you want that to look like.

  2. Pieces of paper are your friend. I know you know this but it is amazing how many people say they get it but then don’t follow the point in practice. You want cancelled checks if you can get them. You want receipts from people who have done work on the house. You want photos of damage to the apartment. You want printouts of emails that you sent to him. You say he has switched management companies three times. Do you have letters from him or written notices saying that? It’s not a disaster if you don’t, but I’m trying to convey that you want to get as much paper as you can.

Don’t freak out if there is a particular piece of paper you can’t find, but just do what you can to collect every piece of paper you can that might be relevant. Then organize them so you can have them ready for the judge to look at.

  1. Write up a chronology of what happened. Get as specific and clear as you can about dates
    We moved in on ____________
    On ___________ we noticed the following problem
    On ____________ we told him about it in a phone call
    On ___________ we told him about it in a letter
    On _________ …
    You get the idea.
8

I don’t do landlord tenant work and I don’t know jack about NY law and procedure. What you want to do is have everything documented. Show the judge the extent of the situation and also the duration of the issues. You want to present your information and side of the story as clearly as possible. Above all stay calm. The judge may ask questions. Answer them as best as possible.

9

One thing that may help is to make three sets of copies of your exhibits and put them in a notebook. One set for the judge, one set for you, and one for the landlord. It keeps your presentation organized, gives the judge a set so you don’t have to interrupt the flow of your presentation, and you know where everything is. It is easy to get flustered in a trial and lose the train of where things are. Make a checklist of the exhibits and check them off as you use them.

10

How long was your lease? The most common rental is a year, no? It seems that if all these issues happened in the span of the past year that your lease would have expired and you’d have either gone to a month to month contract OR you signed a new one-year lease.

If you did sign a new one-year lease, then I’d imagine that that weakens your case. (Note: IANAL just a common sense lay person.) I’d expect the judge to ask you why you signed on again if all this happened before you were asked to re-sign. So I’d try to come up with a good answer.

In any event, even if you lose, most jurisdictions allow tenants to move out based on conditions which render all or part of your property unusable. In your case, if the flooding/mold/heat continue, you may have a case for “constructive eviction.” There is a certain process you’d have to follow (e.g. notification, moving out), but it’s something you might want to research further. Unfortunately, you’d have to wait until one of these events occurred before moving out.

BTW, have you asked for permission to break your lease? He may want to get rid of you as much as you want to get rid of him!

11

They’re halfway through a two-year lease.

From what I’ve seen of Judge Judy, the person who comes into court with all their documentation and calmly lays out exactly what happened and what they want as compensation (and it is reasonable) will win. You signed a two-year lease, your landlord has been negligent about fixing problems that were his responsibility throughout, and you want to be released from your lease without paying a penalty because he hasn’t provided a livable place to live. Figure out where you want to get to and what proof you need to get there.

From what I’ve seen on Judge Judy, you’re not allowed to present as evidence anything except what he has actually said to you, or documents and pictures. She’s throws a lot of stuff out as hearsay.

12

Thanks! One day I’ll learn to read all the way through.

Is 2 years normal in NYC? That seems like a really long time to commit.

13

Thanks for all the help everyone! I really appreciate it. I feel better knowing that all of our picture taking and documentation of the problems will work in our favor. We have asked twice now if he will let us out of our lease and he refused both times. We actually asked after we filed against him and told him we would drop the suit if he would just let us leave and he still denied our request.

In NYC you are always (or at least I have always been) offered the option of a 1 or 2 year lease. This impacts how much they are allowed to raise the rent at the end of the lease and other such stuff. We had intended to sign a 1 year lease but the apartment finder we worked with encouraged us to sign the 2 year lease because our rent here is pretty low and it isn’t rent controlled. That means that at 1 year our rent would have gone from $1450 to $1522.50 per month. Since we had gone through a tremendous amount of moving (moving him from his place to my place and then moving us into the current apartment together) we weren’t in any hurry to move again and locked in the lower rent amount for 2 years. With a decent landlord the 2 year lease is an excellent option. We happen to have a landlord who isn’t decent though.

14

Given that the roof caved in on you and damaged property, you should say you will “settle” for simply canceling the lease.

15

Our case officially goes before a judge in 30 minutes. Wish us luck!

16

I just saw your most recent post but I had been following your thread. I hope all went well. Be sure to update when you can.

17

How did it go?

18

An hour and a half in… How’s it going??

19

I just wanted to say I couldn’t help but chuckle at the part where the ceiling fell on you while you were taking pictures of it (though I hope you weren’t hurt).

Good luck!

20

** fingers crossed **