There is interesting post on the Nearly Legal web-site recently on how a tenant (with the help of Nearly Legal) fought back against a nightmare landlord. None of my landlords of course would dream of behaving like that, but there is always one. Or three. Or more.
Its nice to see that at least some tenants are able to get decent legal aid help and do something about injustice. I think Nearly Legal ought to go for damages for unlawful eviction, if only to punish the landlord and replenish the legal aid fund. But we need to be told how much they get …
Thank you very much for the mention. I should be clear that my every action was cleared by my supervising solicitor, as I am but a paralegal. This was one of the first cases I was given the (carefully watched) running of, so I’m very happy with the result.
I’m not sure ‘nightmare’ is quite right, but badly behaved, certainly and very stupid.
I won’t give details on the disrepair damages, as this would be a bit identifiable, suffice it to say in mid-ish four figures, and we got costs on the illegal eviction injunction. But if we go ahead with the claim for damages for illegal eviction (a few days over a week of sleeping on floors, some ‘missing’ belongings, initial refusal to re-admit – nothing at all uncommon) I might well post the result, if personal circumstances can be extracted.
There are a few legal aid housing solicitors left, but fewer all the time. The pressure is to go for the cases with a possible costs award (disrepair, nuisance, judicial review), which most legal aid housing doesn’t attract, (usually ‘no order as to costs’ is a good outcome).