Signed a stip saying I owe thousands, but judgment says $0,

[Dannielle]

Jurisdiction

New York

After living in my apartment for 7 years, I found myself having to move. The landlord did not renew my lease and there was some last minute miscommunication about the lease renewal. They gave me an extra month, and I stayed an additional month after that, before I could find another place to live. Because I wasn't prepared to have to move out, I had to use my funds for moving and securing a new place to live. The landlord took me to court because of the holdover.

Now, I am trying to take care of my obligation to my old landlord.

The financial advisor that I'm working with read my paperwork and judgment and pointed out that the lawyer representing the landlord tacked on $4500 in legal and late fees when he did the math for me. It was extremely overwhelming and happened so quickly, that I didn't even see it.

This financial advisor who is familiar with people who have found themselves in housing court, knows that courts don't normally award legal and late fees in these types of judgments.

So...

1. There is a judgment of $0 awarded to the landlord, which I am unfamiliar with BECAUSE I know that I signed a stipulation saying that I would pay a certain amount.
2. The amount owed, according to the landlord's files is much more than the amount I signed on the stip.
3. The amount owed solely in back RENT, according to the landlord's files, is about half the amount I agreed to pay on the stip, and 2/5ths the amount according to the LANDLORD'S current records.

(Under the JUDGMENT, it looks like this...

"Warrant to issue forthwith... ...Execution __As Per Stip__"(written)

^^ What does this line mean ^^)


If the judgment says ZERO, what am I required to pay?

If the judgment says ZERO, can I re-negotiate the stipulation, EITHER through the courts because of the fact that legal fees were added, that I was unaware of?

If the judgment says ZERO, can I negotiate directly with the LANDLORD to keep this out of civil court, and from potentially going onto my credit report?

Or, if the judgment says ZERO, am I free from the debt altogether?


Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

 

[ElleMD]

Did an actual judge sign off on the stipulation? If so, you aren't going to be able to renegotiate now unless the landlord agrees and another judge signs off. Most leases have a clause that indicates the tenant is responsible for costs associated with collecting rent or remedying lease violations. What I would suggest, is taking everything you have, the stip, the judgment order, the lease, etc., to an actual lawyer. If cost s an issue, check with legal aid clinics and law schools. Most law schools have clinics which are low or no cost.

 

[Dannielle]

Did an actual judge sign off on the stipulation?

I see the judge's signature on the judgment and her initials on the stipulation.

 

[Michael Wechsler]

What does the stipulation state regarding legal fees? I've been in New York Landlord and Tenant Court before and I will tell you that they will tack on legal fees where warranted. Does it make sense that a landlord, who needs to spend money hiring an attorney to file an eviction proceeding and then has to appear in court to do the job, should come away eating that legal cost? No, it is not a free ride for the tenant to cause these issues. I'm not going to accuse you but I'm a little skeptical that what you're saying is the issue of what happened.

I'm very sympathetic to you and tenants but here it seems that you were sued for non-payment of rent which occurred before your move out date. Sometimes penalties and other costs are added as "additional rent" but that's not the case. As you've said, there is back rent in issue here - so I'd have to believe that this wasn't just an issue of confusion with a move out date.

I'm not here to harass you. I tend to find that clients sometimes see events colored by their own perspectives, e.g. "I have a problem and the other person wasn't as understanding as they should be." In this instance, your best bet would have been to work out something with the landlord to avoid having the attorney need to file a case in Landlord & Tenant court to evict you and to recover his additional costs.

If the stipulation contains an error, that's something you can raise. But if it doesn't contain a clear error, the deal is what you agreed to in the stipulation.

 

[Dannielle]

What does the stipulation state regarding legal fees?

If the stipulation contains an error, that's something you can raise. But if it doesn't contain a clear error, the deal is what you agreed to in the stipulation.

Thank you for your response.

There was a previous case in the winter where I was behind and received assistance to pay the back rent from agencies. I was hoping that once the past due was paid that I would receive a lease renewal.

The office called me and asked if I was re-signing the lease. I told the person that I hadn't received a lease yet. She said she'd send it to me. A week went by without my receiving the lease. I called the office, and she said she'd made a mistake and that she'd call me back. This went on for a few weeks, as there was a CLEAR misunderstanding, as she thought that she had told me that there would be no lease renewal, when she clearly had not. Because of this, the landlord gave me a month past the lease ending date. AND because of this situation, I was not in a financial position to move AND pay the rent for those few months, as I did not have money saved up to make a big move. Hence, I was in a holdover situation. I did not want to give them a move-out date UNTIL I knew when and where I would be moving.

So... when I was in the court-house, on the final day, the lawyer was doing the math for me. It looked accurate to me. My main concern was that I wouldn't have someone coming after me for a large amount of money before I was settled in a new living situation.

I don't recall seeing any attorney fees. I have recently requested the landlord's records and when my financial advisor saw them, she's the one who did the math according to their records and saw that what they have listed for the amount that I've paid and owe, that there is a large amount of legal fees included.

So... the first court stipulation (from when I was behind, and got assistance) states that there will be no legal fees assessed to my debt. The current landlord bills have THOSE previous legal fees included, with the addition of a VERY LARGE legal fee amount after the final court date. (The legal fees from the past were listed in $150 increments. The final one is over $2000)

The final stipulation has me owing an amount of past due rent, but the landlord's own records that I had paid a much larger amount of rent than is listed in the stipulation.

It is very confusing. None of any of our records are matching each other.
And with a JUDGMENT that says $0, and the fact that the landlord has not made any efforts to contact me, I am unsure what is officially on the records.

My goal is to take care of this before it shows up on my credit report. But I do know that NY Housing Courts aren't crazy about having people pay for legal fees, under duress. I do remember that I after being there all morning, I had to leave in the afternoon to go to a new job. Perhaps this is why I didn't get to talk to the court advocate.

The main focus, to my recollection was for the landlord and I to come to a move out date. My goal was to leave as soon as I had a place, and not have to pay for an entire month at the old apartment, if I was able to move within the first week of the month.

Does this help to clarify any questions you have.

 

[Michael Wechsler]

It clarifies and basically confirms what I suspected - your problems began well before the move out date and which won't change anything. The holdover proceeding wasn't based upon the move date - it was the result of your non-payment of rent several months earlier. If you owed nothing and the only issue for the court to decide was your holding over an extra month as a result of the landlord's failure to notify you of a renewal, this would have been routine. But the landlord may not have been in breach of renewal provisions of the lease if you'd breached the lease several months earlier by not paying rent.

I'll also educate you on another fact - the housing courts don't stick landlords with paying all the legal fees where tenants clearly don't pay rent and simply expect the landlord to bear the brunt of all of their problems. While they may try hard to limit legal fee awards to landlords, your case hasn't really given them much reason to have sympathy for you as a hardship. If you couldn't afford the rent and payments were in issue for several months, you should have arranged to move to a cheaper place. How long was this situation supposed to go on - for another year with the landlord footing the bill? You have to be realistic and step back and view the situation for what it is.

That said, let's talk about the stipulation. Did you have an attorney represent you? If so, you must speak with your attorney as to where the provision for legal fees is set forth. If they are clearly excessive then you have another complaint. But if we're talking about several cases and appearances, you might have an even more difficult hill to climb. This is why it's always best to avoid landlord and tenant disputes from reaching the filing stage in court. My advice is to read carefully through the stipulation again and also contact your attorney about where legal fees are provided for under the terms of the agreement. If you ask the landlord's attorney, they will probably point out to you where that provision is contained or, possibly, admit the error. If you're not satisfied with their answer, you may have a reason not to pay for what you claim you understood were the terms in the stipulation. I'm just telling you not to rely upon any notion that the courts will generally promote holdover tenants getting away with forcing a landlord to take them to court and incur the cost of legal fees.

 

[Dannielle]

It clarifies and basically confirms what I suspected - .

Thank you And...
Please do your best to take your suspicions out of this and try to answer my questions. When you look at it through the lens of who is at fault, you can't even get to the point of answering my questions. I stated that I didn't have time to speak with the court appointed council, so I thought that that made it clear that I didn't have my own attorney.

1. I want to know if the Judgment of $0 awarded to the landlord means anything? Does it mean something different from what is agreed to in the stipulation?

2. Since there is a stipulation signed saying that I will pay a certain amount that includes late/legal fees, how do I rectify the amount due in fees? It seems that they were adding in old legal fees (according to the landlord's own records) that the previous stipulation denied them.

The previous legal fees range from $70 - $135. Then there is one for $2049. That seems strange to me, but I don't have an attorney.

 

[Michael Wechsler]

It's quite clear that nobody can answer your question without seeing the entire stipulation. You want us to help you interpret your own interpretation of several stipulations. And as I said, you'll get the best answer as to where the legal fees are contained by speaking to the creditor. Tell them the legal fees weren't supposed to be owed and that the stipulation contains no provisions for the payments demanded. See what they say and what part of the stipulation they claim entitles them to legal fees.

Since we don't have the stipulations to read, the best we can do is go by what usually happens to fill in the blanks. When you arrived you made it sound like you were being charged thousands of dollars in legal fees for a renewal situation that is entirely the landlord's fault in failing to notify you in a timely fashion about a lease renewal. That itself presents the most important issue in your case, like it or not. And the fact is that it's quite clear that your problem existed well earlier than the lease renewal. So that means to me that your understanding of the stipulations may not be complete.

Regarding the legal fees, $70-135 probably represents something small, such as sending out legal notices to you and compiling paperwork. $2,049 usually represents something more involved, such as court appearances.

Thank you And...
Please do your best to take your suspicions out of this and try to answer my questions. When you look at it through the lens of who is at fault, you can't even get to the point of answering my questions. I stated that I didn't have time to speak with the court appointed council, so I thought that that made it clear that I didn't have my own attorney.

1. I want to know if the Judgment of $0 awarded to the landlord means anything? Does it mean something different from what is agreed to in the stipulation?

2. Since there is a stipulation signed saying that I will pay a certain amount that includes late/legal fees, how do I rectify the amount due in fees? It seems that they were adding in old legal fees (according to the landlord's own records) that the previous stipulation denied them.

The previous legal fees range from $70 - $135. Then there is one for $2049. That seems strange to me, but I don't have an attorney.

 

[Dannielle]

It's quite clear that nobody can answer your question without seeing the entire stipulation. You want us to help you interpret your own interpretation of several stipulations. And as I said, you'll get the best answer as to where the legal fees are contained by speaking to the creditor. Tell them the

It wasn't my intention to make it sound as if the landlord had done something faulty. I was trying to explain the course of events from my point of view, as briefly as possible.

 

[Michael Wechsler]

I understand. Details can be lost when trying to describe them in writing, which is more time consuming than talking or reading the documents. But the answer to your question is best as mentioned above - have the creditor point you to exactly where you are supposed to be responsible for the payments they are demanding. You certainly have that right to ask and I'm sure anyone would do the same. Good luck.

It wasn't my intention to make it sound as if the landlord had done something faulty. I was trying to explain the course of events from my point of view, as briefly as possible.