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Practical Moral Philosophy for Lawyers Aggressive Landlords The state legislature enacts a Landlord-Tenant statute specifically authorizing residential tenants to offset against rent payments any sums which they expend in improving premises to conform to housing code minimum standards of habitability. The intended effect of the act is to prevent evictions for nonpayment of rent when the tenant makes necessary repairs and to encourage landlords to make timely repairs. After passage of the statute, residential lease forms appeared which included a clause whereby the tenant waived the right to offset rent by making emergency repairs pursuant to the statute. The legislature, concerned that the lease waivers undermined the statute, amended the statute to make such tenant waivers void, but after an intensive lobbying effort, no penalties were provided for landlords who included waiver provisions in the statute. (The legal effect is that a waiver is simply a null act, the courts will not enforce it, and the waiver cannot be asserted to defeat a defense to an eviction action.) A landlord requests that you draft a standard lease form for use by tenants
in all his apartment buildings. The client specifically request that
a tenant waiver be included. You advise the landlord that such a waiver
is unenforceable and that the legislature has acted on this specific
situation. But the landlord persists. The landlord argues that the waiver
will deter aggressive tenants from exercising a statutory right the
landlords vigorously opposed. |
