Posts Tagged ‘how to evict a tenant’
What You Need To Know About Self Help Evictions
If you take the law into your own hands to evict your tenant, that is what self help eviction is. There are procedures you have to go through with the court and that is the only legal way you can evict a tenant.
A self help eviction is when you, the landlord, want that dead-beat tenant out and so you take matters into your hands by: threatening or bullying the tenant, changing the locks or adding additional locks to bar tenant from the property, turning off utility services (water, gas, electricity, telephone), or removing a tenant’s personal property.
Do not even threaten to lock the tenant out or to shut off the utilities. In most States there are clear statutes that prohibit threats of self help eviction.
If you are dragged into court for a self help eviction, the judge won’t care that the tenants were behind on the rent. If the tenant is in possession of your rental home, he has certain rights and protections: You need to go through the correct eviction procedures with the court.
What will happen to you if you do a self help eviction and get brought into court? It depends. If you removed the tenant’s personal property and through it in the trash, the court will award the tenant with the value of his belongings which could easily be 20,000 dollars or more. A judge will not require receipts from the tenant either because the landlord could have disposed of such receipts while removing the tenant’s property from the premises.
You can likewise be litigated for the common law deliberate torts of conversion (the physical exercise of dominance over an item in a way that is at odds with the rights of its possessor which permanently strips the possessor of its value); encroachment to chattels (the exercising of dominance over an item in a mode conflicting with the rights of its possessor which temporarily strips the possessor of its value); and trespass (the wrongful entering on the property of some other enjoying right to possession). Since these claims for relief are intentional torts, if the court finds liability and awards any actual (or even nominal) damages, the court may award punitive damages to the tenant as well as attorneys fees.
In the case of WILLIAM SPANO versus HANNA ABDALLA South Carolina Superior Court (October 3, 2002) Hanna Abdulla engaged in self help eviction by changing the locks and removing William Spano’s personal property from the premise to the sidewalk. Hanna Abdulla laid claim that she believed the renter had vacated the premises. The judicature was not swayed by her claim and granted Spano 1,800 dollars for the three months of rent expense he had to pay by living somewhere else. The court in addition awarded 1,210 dollars in punitory damages and lawyers fees.
In Gordon v Morris, 2001 Ohio App, the landlord switched the locks right before the end of the month after discovering that the tenants had turned off the utilities and taken out most of their stuff. The trial court awarded the tenants only 97 dollars in actual damages (they had paid rent through the end of the month but were deprived of the use of the apartment, and this was the prorated amount). But the trial court further awarded 1,000 dollars in punitive damages and 1,462 dollars in attorneys fees.
The court is not siding with the tenant: What the court is doing is preserving the peace by stopping disturbances and violence that accompanies struggles for the possession of land. If it was legal to turn off a tenant’s power or throw their stuff out on the sidewalk, that same angry tenant could turn violent and shoot you. While at first glance it does not seem as if the courts are on your side, they really are.
I hope this article helps you with your rental home. Do you have a rental property and are you tired of having to find a renter and dealing with tenant problems? Is your rental property in California and in the cities of Fresno, Clovis, Madera, Sanger, Selma, Chowchilla, or Lemoore? If so then you need to go to Fresno property management