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. 🫠

This is a locked and overpaid profession.

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?

Oh please fuck off. This is a locked and overpaid profession.

And if the landlord hadn’t been such a shithead, it wouldn’t have.

Won't stop them. They'll just raise the rent on other tenants to pay for it and go on being slumlords.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This could have been completely avoided if landlords didn't suck way more.

Its a silly place

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.

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.

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!

Any combination of currently sealed docs/shitty journalism. My guess is squarely mediocrity

Same. I wonder why. Is there something about the way the headline is written that causes this initial premature interpretation?

So...

• A $287 bill
• $32.000 in settlement
• And a $225.000 legal fee that may or may not be paid by the losing party

US is a very crazy land

$225,000 to take a landlord to court. Lawyers suck.

Well yeah there's a bunch of ways to get there I just find it interesting they chose to leave it out.

Malicious conduct, which certainly is present here, opens the door to punitive damages which has the potential to be based on vibes alone. Unintentional housing violations are no joke; intentional housing violations are taken very seriously in states where law is respectively.

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.

Disbarment is the only option and jail should follow as well.

When you pay my regular bills, I won't be.