Articles — tenants

I was in court in central Kentucky this week for a pretty complicated eviction case. There were eight witnesses on my side alone. The judge announced afterward that it was the longest eviction docket in his many years on the bench. After a two-hour hearing, my client had prevailed. However, one of the things that struck me about that day was that I watched three other landlords with much, much, much simpler cases have their evictions dismissed. Each of those cases involved non-payment of rent and, in each case, the dismissal was the result of the landlord failing to give...

One week ago, I got really excited while checking Twitter. Actually, that happens every day. For those of you who don’t use Twitter, I highly recommend it if you’re into breaking news. Twitter is where you read about it first. Sorry for the digression. Anyway, I was scrolling through my Twitter feed last Thursday and saw that the Kentucky Supreme Court had issued an opinion in a landlord-tenant case. And not just in a landlord-tenant case, but in a forcible detainer case. I had found a unicorn! Very rarely do the appellate courts publish opinions on residential landlord-tenant cases, and...

THE STORY Bailey is the property manager of The Colosseum, a 250-unit luxury complex. The Colosseum allows its residents to own pets, but has a list of restricted breeds that includes all the usual suspects: Pit Bills, Rottweilers, German Shepherds, Chows, etc. Recently, Bailey has received several complaints that a Pit Bull was on the property near the 300 Building. None of those who complained could associate the animal with any particular resident, and no one on Bailey’s staff had ever seen the dog when they investigated the complaints. One afternoon as she was walking the grounds with a member...

There’s an old saying that the two happiest days of a boat-owner’s life are the day he buys the boat and the day he sells it. The warning implied is that most people have no idea of what boat ownership actually entails, so they are relieved when they get rid of its burdens. The same warning applies generally to landlords who try to navigate the rental industry without consulting an attorney, and specifically to those that sue their tenants without seeking the advice of counsel. Many landlords, out of principle or outright anger, end up suing their tenants for damages,...

“All the laws favor the tenants” is a phrase I hear often in the rental industry. As a Kentucky attorney who only represents landlords, I spend close to 150 days a year in court advocating for landlords, and many hours consulting and giving advice to landlords on how to structure their leases and applications, and how to deal with their tenants. While my practice is located near two jurisdictions that have adopted the URLTA (Lexington and Georgetown), I do plenty of work in surrounding counties that have not. As a result, I have had to develop expertise in landlord-tenant relationships...