Law Firms Rod Tennyson, P.A. and Babbitt, Johnson, Osborne & Le Clainche, P.A. Announced That Gables Residential Settles Florida
August 24 2005 - 9:00AM
Business Wire
Litigation Continues Against Other National Landlords Alleging over
$70 Million in Illegal Charges to 55,000 Florida Tenants The law
firms Rod Tennyson, P.A., and Babbitt, Johnson, Osborne & Le
Clainche, P.A., announced today that Gables Residential, Inc,
http://www.gables.com/, (NYSE:GBP), one of the nation's largest
publicly traded apartment landlords, has agreed to provide up to $3
million for refunds and to remove $16 million from credit reports
to settle a class action filed by tenants charged with illegal
lease termination fees in a class action case. These fees are
commonly called "insufficient notice fee," "early termination fee,"
and/or "liquidated damage fee." It has also agreed to wipe out $16
million in debts from their credit reports. Palm Beach Circuit
Judge Jonathan D. Gerber approved the settlement in a final
judgment on August 12, 2005, giving thousands of Florida Gables
former tenants who may have actually paid these illegal fees until
October 11, 2005 to make a claim for monetary damages. It is
estimated that 90 percent of class member tenants had adverse
reports to their credit bureaus as a result of these illegal fees.
This case - and four others pending against major apartment
landlords in Florida and the nation - have the potential of wiping
out $70 million worth of bad credit reports for 55,000 tenants. The
defendants are Equity Residential, Trammel Crow, ZOM Residential
Services and Concord Management. "Filing these cases is simply the
right thing to do," said West Palm Beach lawyer Ted Babbitt of
Babbitt, Johnson, Osborne & Le Clainche, P.A., who represents
the tenants with Rod Tennyson of Rod Tennyson, P.A., also of West
Palm Beach. "It would go a long way toward restoring the good name
and good credit for people harmed by illegal fees." The Gables
settlement, resulting from a case filed in December 2002, affects
12,000 tenants, who faced illegal fees averaging $1,396 each.
Gables did not admit to the illegality of the fees but agreed to
the settlement and to cease the practices in the future. "This
settlement is important because it wipes out $16 million in bad
credit information from illegal fees," Tennyson said. "We believe
it's a model for future resolution in doing the right thing by
tenants, mostly in their twenties and early thirties, and help them
get their credit reports accurate and to raise their credit scores.
I would urge all former tenants to get their free annual credit
reports at the Federal Trade Commission site at
http://www.annualcreditreport.com to see if their former landlords
may have reported these unlawful fees to the credit bureau." Based
in Boca Raton, Gables manages 52,860 apartment homes in 188
communities, owns 85 communities with 23,768 stabilized apartment
homes and has an additional nine communities with 2,388 apartment
homes under development or lease-up. The Gables Residential website
lists 17 complexes in Palm Beach County, eight in Broward, three in
Miami-Dade, six in Central Florida, three in the Tampa Bay area and
one in St. Lucie County. For more information and a listing of
properties by area, see http://www.gablesclassaction.org. Babbitt
and Tennyson have similar litigation against America's largest
landlord, Chicago-based Equity Residential (NYSE:EQR),
http://www.equityapartments.com/. On December 1 of last year, Palm
Beach County Circuit Judge Susan R. Lubitz concluded the Real
Estate Investment Trust knowingly violated Florida law by illegally
charging tenants these illegal fees if they left before their
one-year leases were up or failed to give notice of non-renewal.
Judge Lubitz then ordered Equity to remove over $15 million in
these illegal charges from the credit reports of 14,700 former
Equity tenants. Equity has appealed and lost twice. Most recently,
on July 6th of this year the Fourth District Court of Appeals
affirmed the Equity class certification. The Equity suit was filed
in November 2002. Equity, with $12.5 billion in assets, is the
nation's largest publicly traded apartment owner, with 33,000
apartments in Florida. For more information and a complete listing
of properties by area, see http://www.equityclassaction.org.
Tennyson and Babbitt have filed similar potential three other major
Florida landlords in Palm Beach County Circuit Court: - Trammell
Crow, http://www.tcresidential.com/, (NYSE:TCC), with 29 Florida
communities, affecting 10,300 potential class members with an
average liability of $1,635 (Garber v. Trammell Crow,
50-2005-CA001271); - ZOM Residential Services,
http://www.zomusa.com/custom/zom/about_zrs.html, (ZRS) of Orlando
with 22 Florida communities (Webster v. ZOM, 50-2005-CA003009); -
Concord Management,
http://www.ced-concord.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=concord.main, of
Maitland, Fl. with 70 Florida communities (McLean v. Concord,
50-2005-CA005051); (The complaints can be viewed at
http://www.rodtennyson.com) (Gables suit: Christopher Water et al.
v. Gables Residential Trust, etc. et al, Fifteenth Judicial
Circuit, Palm Beach County, Civil Case No. 02-CA-14989. Equity
suit: Tammy Yates, Peter Miller, Maria Cruz and Jose Ortega as
Class Representatives v. Equity Residential Properties, et al.,
Civil Case No. CA 02-14116, Palm Beach County Circuit Court.)
Further information on the suits and general background is
available at http://www.babbitt-johnson.com or
http://www.rodtennyson.com. Rod Tennyson, whose practice includes
consumer protection litigation, actually wrote the consumer
protection laws he said the landlord defendants violated while he
served as a Florida Assistant Attorney General in the 1970s. Ted
Babbitt is founding partner of his 37-year-old firm, which
represents catastrophically injured and wronged people in
pharmaceutical litigation, brokerage fraud, personal injury and
wrongful death, products liability and medical and legal
malpractice cases.
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