Imagine getting an eviction notice from your landlord because the landlord wants to rent the unit to a family member. Would you simply move out, or would you fight to stay?

In this story, one renter is in this situation, and she seeks legal advice from a free service where law students provide the advice.

Keep reading to see how the story plays out from the perspective of the student who gives her the advice.

Do your job and get me what I am entitled do!

My law school offers a free legal advice and representation service to low-income earners in the city. We, the students, volunteer in this service and help people with their cases.

Most of our cases are related to contracts, employment, tenancy, wills, or petty crime, and we are limited by our mandate to not provide support for anything too intensive (eg. jail time possibility, divorce, automobile accidents etc…).

Anything we send out to clients or third-parties must go through our supervising lawyers (SL).

Also keep in mind most of the students, including me, are volunteers going through full-time law school and have jobs outside of the classroom, so working on the files usually take a bit of time.

One issue involved a landlord.

One of my clients, M, came in with what seemed like a simple case. She told me that she was being evicted by her landlord without being provided sufficient notice, and as such wanted to get compensated.

A week goes by and I got working on her file, doing research on our local residential tenancy statutes and calling her a few times to iron out the details.

The landlord had given the tenant notice in Nov 2017 (on a hand-written slip of paper, which technically isn’t the proper way to serve notice) about the fact that the unit is needed for a family member to move in by Feb 1st.

At this point, it was already mid-January and getting close to the move-out date of Jan 31st.

The client had two options.

Our local statutes provided that landlords must give 2 months notice in the proper form prior to terminating the rental for occupation, as well as 1 month free rent to the tenant.

So I get on the phone with M and tell her that she can either “refuse the notice” and continue the tenancy since it wasn’t served properly, or she can move out and we’ll get her 1 month free rent for her.

At this point she completely changes her tone and demands that we ask for 2 months of free rent (apparently it takes her that long to find a new place), get her damage deposit back before moving out, and have the landlord pay for her moving fees.

I told her that’s basically not possible since she’s not entitled to that by law, and she starts flipping out at me over the phone telling me how her landlord is a crazy person and we are totally useless if we can’t claim “what is fair” for her.

There’s another problem.

So tell her I need to meet with the SL next week to discuss the situation.

The SL essentially tells me that my assessment is accurate and that we can’t make claims that run counter to the law (pretty obvious).

Before I could call her in the afternoon, she calls me through our switchboard (routed through to me, it turns out she called like 4 times that day), and tells me she is freaking out because her landlord served a 10-day eviction notice on her door.

The eviction notice was for failure to pay rent for January, which is a valid and totally separate eviction claim. M never told me she withheld rent for January.

Now, the client only has one option.

At this point we were basically 3 days away from Jan 31st.

Due to this new notice, we can no longer argue the tenancy was still in effect since she would still get kicked for nonpayment. The only remedy was to argue that the one month of rent was withheld because M had expected to move out by the end of January.

So I tell M she needs to get out of there by Jan 31st if she wants to protect herself, and we’ll help her communicate with the landlord and ask for the January withholding to be in lieu of the one month free rent.

She didn’t listen.

Lo and behold, February rolls around and she was still occupying the unit into the first week of the month.

So the landlord filed a second eviction notice for failure to pay rent for February.

She is now 2 months behind rent and is facing two valid eviction notices one of which is coming up in 3-4 days, so she’s pretty screwed.

If she is evicted due to non-payment, she will get absolutely nothing, not even the 1 month free rent.

The client thought she knew better.

The best course of action is that she needs to pay her January rent to satisfy the January notice, and we can continue to claim the one-month free rent for February which is already pushing it in the eyes of the law, and hopefully keep her from becoming homeless in the next week.

I get onto the phone with her again to tell her that she needs to pay a month of rent.

She begins to shout at me over the phone and essentially tells me I’m crazy and incompetent and am in a conspiracy to side with the landlord. She says she absolutely refuses to pay a cent to the landlord and that she deserved 2 month rent and deposit returned immediately and moving fees covered.

She said (and I quote) “I know the laws of the place, I can read too you know! Obviously you guys don’t want to help me because you think it’s too hard. Don’t lie to me. I KNOW WHAT I DESERVE IN THIS SITUATION SO JUST DO YOUR JOB AND GET ME WHAT I AM ENTITLED TO OR ELSE I WILL DO IT MYSELF!”

OP gave her what she asked for.

I said “Okay ma’am, I’ve already told you what you’re entitled to, and you don’t want it. So I’m going to do my job, which is to follow the law.”

I hung up and had a quick 5 minute chat with the SL, he backed me and said that he gets at least one or two of these types of people each year, and told me to draft a letter to M and close the file.

So I drafted a short and sweet letter and basically told her “Following your instructions, we’re ceasing to provide any further representation. Our organization is mandated to comply with the law, and upon being informed of this you’ve elected for self-representation. Good luck on your legal issue.”

SL approved within minutes and had it sent out.

This is funny!

About a week later I receive an email from M, it’s filled with expletive insults and one sentence that reads:

“You and everyone at your organization are useless and will never be good lawyers, I thought you all smart but tell your SL and worthless friends that they are better off planting potato because all of you can only be potato farmers.”

I had a good chuckle in class and never heard from her again.

I’m assuming it didn’t work out well for the client or she probably would’ve bragged about it in her letter. She really should’ve just taken the legal advice she was offered instead of going rogue.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This is an obviously sarcastic response.

It does seem random.

I’m sure it is satisfying.

Thankfully!

Some people think they’re above the law.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.