Landlord/Tenant

Our attorneys bring years of experience to successfully represent tenants faced with a variety of challenging legal situations, including unsafe and/or unsanitary housing conditions, evictions, discrimination, retaliation, early lease terminations, and disability issues, such as reasonable accommodation requests.

CASE HIGHLIGHTS:

• Successfully prevented a landlord from evicting a tenant who properly withheld rent due to hazardous conditions allowed in the apartment by the landlord.

• Negotiated the early termination of a lease for clients facing unsanitary conditions in their apartment.

• Achieved a favorable monetary judgment for tenants after a trial regarding their landlord’s failure to provide adequate heat during the winter months and other violations of the Massachusetts State Sanitary Code.  We then roundly defeated the landlord’s attempt to appeal the decision.

• Negotiated a favorable settlement on behalf of a low-income family suffering from mold infestation in their rental housing.

• Obtained class certification for tenants in Cambridge, Massachusetts who were unlawfully charged a finder’s fee of one month’s rent for apartments by a property management company, The Niles Company, Inc., that employed an unlicensed sales person.  After extensive litigation and negotiations, the defendants finally agreed to a Settlement Agreement and Judgment filed with the Court, which included changing their practices and refunding finder’s fees to the Class.  The Court approved a fund for refunds of the unlawful finder’s fees, incentive payments for the named plaintiffs, and attorney’s fees and expenses for plaintiffs’ counsel in the total amount of $200,000.