Landlord Troubles

Jan 27 19:26 UTC 1999

Grex originally rented the Pumpkin from William VanFossen.  Unfortunately
ownership of the building containing the Pumkin has been in dispute for a
long time, and when Mr. VanFossen died in 1997 the dispute was still
unresolved.  We don't know the details of the situation, but through some
agreement between the disputants a company called Flying Dutchman
Management came to be in charge of managing the property, though the
inheritors of Bil VanFossen's estate are his family.  We have had some
favorable dealings with his widow, Marcia VanFossen.

Monday I got mail from Flying Dutchman saying that we were in arrears
for $162.64.  It was easy to see what the discrepancy was; $129.36 was the
check I wrote December 23rd which they hadn't deposited yet, and the
remaining $33.26 was twice the difference between our new electricity
payment and our old one.  They had charged us the old rate for August and
September because they hadn't gotten my letter about it until October 9th
(despite the fact that I wrote it September 11th.)
 
So I called them up to straighten it out.  Unfortunately I was connected
with Susan Watrous, whom I had dealt with last summer.  I tried to explain
the problem to her, and she was rude and belligerent just as I had
remembered.  She wanted to know what made me think we got to determine our
own electricity payment, and I explained that it was in our lease, of
which she has a copy.  It seems to make her angrier whenever anyone gives
her a non-submissive reply, and when she read our lease she flew into a
rage.  She declared it "ludicrous", and said "Well how am I to know if
you're telling the truth?" about our electricity usage.  I explained that
we were sharing a meter with someone else so we couldn't use that, and of
course that just made her angrier.  Finally she declared that she could
not stand to abide by this lease, and she was notifying me right now that
in 4 months (at the end of May) it would be null and void.  She's not
kicking us out, she eplained, but we will either have to go without a
lease or sign one that she likes better.
 
I asked what the terms of the new lease would be, and she said we could
expect another 5% increase in our rent.  I asked what she would do about
the electricity, and she said she would have to think about it.  I said we
needed a copy of the lease ahead of time, so we could decide whether or
not to sign it, and she said "Oh, I'll give you a couple of days".  I told
her that was not enough, and she said "You'll get it when I'm ready and I
have nothing more to say on the subject", at which point I said goodbye
and hung up, because I couldn't take anymore.
 
I called Valerie and Jan, and then went over to their house to explain the
situation.  They had some good ideas, and we decided that Valerie would
call Marcia VanFossen and try to get her on our side.  Jan thinks that
being as our lease is as simple as it is, there is legal justification in
interpreting it in terms of the intent of its clauses.  Clause 4 says: 
 
(4) This agreement will remain in effect until it is terminated by either
party.  The party wishing to terminate this agreement must give
notification ot the other party four (4) months in advance, except by
mutual agreement. 
 
It was in there in order to give us time to move if the landlord wanted
to change the conditions.  Unfortunately it doesn't say explicity that the
landlord has to give us the new conditions at the time of the
notification, but Jan's feeling is that that was clearly the intent, so
since this is a simple lease they might be obliged to.  I don't know; I
think we need a lawyer's opinion on that.

response 2 of 220:

Jan 27 20:02 UTC 1999

It would appear to me that Flying Dutchman, in the form of Susan whoever, has
given us notice.  Whether it is adequate notice, whether it must be in written
form, etc is not clear.  Two clarifications need to be made.
1) Let's strengthen our bargaining position by having a new place as a
default. In the worst case interpretation of this clause, we will be faced
with a "take it or leave it" offer shortly before the end of our four month
period.  
2) If we really want to keep dealing with Flying Dutchman, then we might want
to enlist a lawyer to deal with them for us.  If we want to disagree with
Susan about what notification implies, and whether we need to see the new
lease before we are officially "notified", we're going to need a lawyer
anyway.  She's clearly not going to listen to us.