Paying for Your Landlord to Waste Your Time
By: Indigo Null
It was the first afternoon failure-to-pay-rent docket on Friday, September 1st, 2023, with Judge Morse presiding. A case was called, and a middle-aged Black man came forward as the tenant. His landlord, Rock Blue Management, had sent an agent on their behalf. The Judge asked if they had agreed on their case and the money owed, and the agent said they had not, but she’d like to postpone the case. The agent wanted the postponement so she had time to pull together the tenant’s ledger and to check when the property was licensed, because she knew it was unlicensed for some portion of the time listed on the complaint.
In Baltimore City, a landlord needs to be licensed to use failure to pay rent court, and a landlord cannot file for a balance from months they were not licensed. If they are still unlicensed when they come to failure to pay rent court, the complaint should be dismissed outright.
The tenant said the property was unlicensed until recently and only gained a license when a new management company took it over, and showed a printout proving this lack of licensure. He wanted to proceed with the case and asked the judge to dismiss it. He mentioned he works and doesn’t want to have to keep taking off work to come to court and fight a case that should be dismissed. He brought documentation backing up everything he said.
Judge Morse asked why the agent didn’t already have licensure and ledger information ready. The agent responded that she was filling in and that someone else was supposed to be there as the agent that day. The agent then asked again for a postponement. Judge Morse accepted her reasoning and postponed the case for two weeks, then asked the clerk to set a date and time. The clerk recommended a 2:45 docket several weeks out.
The tenant said that he gets off work at 2:45, so it would be tough to make a 2:45 case on the date mentioned - The Judge told him, “Well, they actually start at 3, so you should be fine. You can always call and tell them you’re on your way from work”.
BRU Court Watchers have seen tenants do this in the past and their case is heard in their absence anyway. Even if they arrive a few minutes late, they can still face a default judgment against them, which is especially frustrating when the tenant has a defense.
The landlord is the one who filed the case, and therefore presumably had the most time to prepare, but the agent showed up with no ledger and didn’t even know if the property was currently licensed or not. Despite this, the landlord’s agent was given the postponement they asked for to get together the documents they should have already had prepared for the case, essentially giving them a do-over when they came unprepared.
This case illustrates how the burden of proof seems to essentially not exist for landlords and their agents, and they can be given multiple attempts to evict a tenant even when they admit to operating illegally and come in with no documentation at all. Now the tenant has to take off work and lose income to come back to court, or risk missing his case altogether and getting a judgment against him. Why are there different standards for preparedness and proof between landlords and tenants? Why is a tenant being made to lose wages and miss work to cover for a landlord’s lack of preparation?