This one's for you, 1Ls.
A landlord posts the following notice on the front door of every unit in an apartment building:
"I have noticed a very large amount of cigarette butts thrown into the courtyard, this is a very bad eye sore to the community and it must stop immediately. If anyone is caught throwing them out there is going to be a fine for the amount of time spent picking them up." [I'll throw in one [sic] to cover the whole thing.]
If the landlord actually attempted to impose such a fine on a tenant, could she do so legally? Assume that there is no clause in the lease covering this issue.
This kind of makes me want to start smoking just so I can start littering the courtyard with cigarette butts.
Anyway, come on, 1Ls--impress us with your landlord-tenant knowledge. Make Professor Hill proud.
UPDATE: I forgot to include the best line. "Please be courteous of your fellow neighbors and keep your cigarettes in a can next to your door if you smoke." Because having a rusted coffee can full of stinking cigarette butts next to every door would not be an eye sore at all. What a great solution.
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3 comments:
I'm going to say maybe. Not. It's funny, though. I wonder how much the landlord thinks his/her time is worth. It's almost an invitation to rebel, isn't it? Like now it's cigarette butts, but how much worse could it be? Dorito bags? Beer caps? Incidentally, we just finished this section in Davidson's class and it was a remarkably brief overview. I really thought it'd take up more time this semester.
To the extent that the butts negatively impact other tenants' quiet enjoyment of the premises, the Landlord has an obligation to remove them. Absent a clause in the lease giving him the right to fine tenants who toss the butts in the commons, he probably cannot do so. What he can do is arrange for clean-up, and increase rent on all tenants in the future to recoup the cost.
It may be that there is a clause in the lease that requires tenants to keep the premises (including common areas) in good condition - if a particular tenant were egregiously violating that clause, his remedy would be eviction.
(But I'm not in Campos' or Hill's class, either).
I don't know if the fine would be legal, but thanks to Hill, I do know that if I did get a fine, my best recourse would be to spend the day flushing instant concrete down the toilet.
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