Bottom line: Just because you CAN (and that still has yet to be determined) doesn't mean you SHOULD.

I can't believe that guy was willing to be interviewed on camera. He's going to find himself in a world of hurt. The internet and media is not very forgiving.

Talk about rubbing it in... What kind of cruel person would keep on going after a family who experienced an unexpected death like the landlord is doing? He is a really sore loser- you lost in court! Back down!

There's no dying in leasing.

"The family's lawyer argue that dying in your apartment can't be considered abandonment"

It is a very sad thing about the people in country when this statement must be taken to court and proven.

I guess the landlord doesn't realize what will happen now when anyone googles "Sun Harbour Apartments." Well more than $2K worth of damage to his reputation.

@homerjay wants Boston Legal back!: plus he came across as so eloquent and prepared.

@Employees Must Wash Hands: You get their website, apartmentratings.com, yelp, etc. I doubt this is gonna have that big of an impact on their first page results.

@Employees Must Wash Hands: Give it a couple of hours - Google needs time to crawl this page.

Well he did technically abandon the property thus breaking a legally binding contract. I would bet this has happened more than once.

and why would you even bother to fight this over 2000 dollars?

Most if not all landlords are scumbags who is really surprised by this?

@Employees Must Wash Hands: Well the $2000 was what he wanted... now he is going to pay probably close to $50,000 in court fees.

I would have thought he would have stopped sooner.

"...and then you'll be in a world of sh!t, because [lessees] are not alowed to die without permission!"

Ever been the renter of a property? I'm not saying the guy is right (morally), but if it was someone who just broke their lease and skipped town, they'd get charged. Except if they skipped town, the landlord can't do anything but get a judgment against them. Apparently, you can get a judgment against an estate and collect on it. You going to chastise his car company for repo-ing his car next?

Again, I'm not saying the guy is doing good. Not only does it seem like he didn't explain it to the family at the time, it's obviously bad publicity to do this.

If you're him, what if you needed that 900/month to stay afloat? If you're worried about that much money, you probably don't give a crap about what a bunch of whiners on the internet think about you. Something tells me people aren't looking for this place on the internet anyways.

@Employees Must Wash Hands: Does it help if we google it, and promote this article in the results, or is that only for our personal use?

I'm not defending this guy, but can you imagine if apartments in Ft. Lauderdale DIDN'T go after the estate for rent? They'd all be out of business.

There's a reason Florida is called "God's Waiting Room"

This landlord is an idiot. He's going to lose so much more money than he had before, not to mention get himself vilified in the press. And while some leases have provisions that allow for the lease to survive the tenant, some don't -- and as this landlord lost at trial, I've got to guess that this lease did not. How stupid do you have to be to press something like this, being cruel to a bereaved family, when you don't have a legal leg to stand on?

@blockbustarhymes: Sorry to disagree with you, but the apartment managers were notified two days after he died. They had done the walk through several days later. To me it sounds like they were unable to rent the apartment so they decided to go after the previous renters estate. I realize they did not get there 60 days notice, but the apartment didn't stay stagnant for months due to the renter.

I'm sure the landlord would rather have the apartment "abandoned" because the alternative is haunting.

Tacky, tacky, tacky.

I hope the court upholds the original judgment.

@Skankingmike: I don't think so. I don't think death can legally constitute abandonment. As soon as he died, the contract was null and void.

But you're absolutely right, no more surprise at scummy landlord than a dishonest car dealer.

@SantosJudo:

Your superstitious? Does it really make a difference if someone died in an apartment your planning on renting? I might be a bit worried is someone was murdered. That can suggest a bad neighborhood or something.

The government gets a cut of your estate when you die, why shouldn't the landlord get one?

I'm not defending the landlord's actions.

@tc4b: Death does not immediately release you from financial obligations -- ESPECIALLY loans or other kinds of lending relationships.

The interesting part is that these were expenses that had yet to be incurred but were still contractual.

There needs to be more regulation of landlords. There are laws to protect renters but it is very hard for a renter to get the law to act on them. I wish landlords had to get a license before they could collect rent and have to report to a board. File complaints against the landlord to the board and the landlord gets the license yanked. Hair dressers have to be licensed. Why not landlords? Make them answerable to an authority and have definite penalties for failure to treat renters with respect.

@blockbustarhymes: Yeah, because dying unexpectedly is exactly like skipping town, functionally speaking. And we all know that all things being equal, there's no reason not to step outside the letter of the law, or the letter of the lease in this case. Or not.

The guy may be within his right to do this. Apparently the courts didn't agree though, and neither do we. And it's not always about doing something just because you can.

@blockbustarhymes: this isn't some guy renting out his basement to make ends meet. this is an apartment management company that owns a few dozen apartment buildings. [www.emcproperties.com]

i really don't think the "needs money to stay afloat" argument holds water in this case. so what if the apartment was vacant for a few months. can you say "tax write-off"?

If he was so concerned about getting his money after the death of one of his tenants, then he should have his tenants sign a seperate sheet of paper laying out the details of what gets charged after they pass way. Anything beyond 2 months seems extreme to charge for. If someone signed that contract, then it's binding.

I believe most people would be offended by this, so he believed a basic binding contract would cover him.

As for the people who say "Dying doesn't release the dead of contractual obligations" sometimes, it does. If you die, your car gets reposessed - therefore you no longer OWE PAYMENTS ON IT, you gave back the property. (only when the repo'ed car still has money owed on it after the repo, does the estate pay -- but I'm not an expert, that's what I always thought.) Such as this man who passed away gave back the apartment for renting purposes. You probably have to prove without a doubt clauses in the lease and damages resulting in the man's death, and he was unable to do so.

This man is quite cocky to believe an appeal will save him. The poor family.

@Hobz: If I understand correctly, the argument is over what constitutes abandonment. The owner didn't willingly abandon his apartment so it doesn't make sense, to me, to charge his estate. The car argument doesn't make sense either if he leased a car, the car would belong to the dealership and the same issue of abandonment arises. If he owned the car then it would go to whoever his will stated or to who his estate was awarded and they'd be responsible for payments or repossession.

Besides, it would've been easier to write it off as a $2000 operating loss on his taxes than to file a lawsuit against the estate and have the judgment tied up this long. I mean, if he *really* needed the money to stay afloat.

I love how there is a hearse in the background when the landlord is talking on camera.

Makes me wonder, was he at a funeral? THE funeral? Did the producers bring it in for artistic-alismness? Is it just a coincidence? Are more people at that apartment complex dying? Is there a conspiracy? hmmmm...

@muchenik: The sad thing is this dude is no doubt going to jack up rent on all the other tenants to cover the court losses incurred by this act of greed.

Most landlord-tenant laws recognize that if a lease is broken for whatever reason, then it's the landlord's responsibility to re-lease the apartment as soon as possible, and the person who broke the lease is still responsible for the unrented time.

Given that I didn't watch the interview and don't know whether the landlord did use his best abilities to re-rent the apartment, why shouldn't he be entitled to the rent for the unrented remaining portion of the lease? It's the estate that's paying this. You know, they guy's own money that he left when he died. Insurance isn't estate; it's not like the survivors have to pay it out of life insurance proceeds.

We all know that the deceased's debts are still owed by the estate (the leftover money, not the insurance proceeds). Credit cards, utility bills, and mortgages don't just disappear because you die. They have to be settled to the extent that the estate is capable of paying. Again, if there's not enough left over, the heirs don't have to use their own money, and they don't have to use insurance proceeds.

That's a general observation about how this works in the USA. If there's something in the video I didn't catch, please set my otherwise logical thinking straight.

@SantosJudo: Since he died of a heart attack, its very unlikely that his spirit would remain in the apartment (especially since an ambulance was most likely called and he died on the way or later at the hospital). I would think more likely if the case does not settle, he'd haunt the landlord.

@rpm773: Amounts under 2 million (for 2008, 3.5 million for 2009) are exempted from the estate tax. I think if this guy had over 2 million in assets he wouldn't have been renting a $900 apartment.

@hypochondriac: They must not have jokes where you're from.

You know, if the newspaper knows you are going to die the next day so they can print your obituary, I don't see a problem w/you giving 60 days notice. I mean, it's your body. You should know when you're going to die before the news media does. ;)

@josephbloseph: This page is in 5th place on that Google search now.

@TonyEuryale: and how long until someone links to this story on Apartmentratings.com, yelp, and the other review sites.

Long story short, the guy died, best they can/could do is keep the deposit as a cleaning fee. Yes the letter of the contact can be taken to court but you have to also remember the Judge can and will/did see this as a waste of his/her time. Contacts cannot be one sided.

@balthisar: I know that you're just stating what you observe to be "How this works" in the USA. That doesn't make it fair to the rentee, which is what this site is about.

But your statement "why shouldn't he be entitled to the rent for the unrented remaining portion of the lease", asks a question that I feel that I should answer. It is because the person is dead. He does not live there anymore. I feel that circumstances outside one's control should not punish the rentee in these situations, and The landlord should have been prepared for such a occurance. Heck, even cellphone providers let you out of your contract when you die.

What if he died quietly and "used" the apartment for 60 days afetr his death? I tend to think the landlord would have a bigger problem with that.

@balthisar: I get the landlord wanting the estate to pay the rest of the lease, it's that he also wants to keep the security deposit and last month's rent that I don't get. It should be either the 3 months rent or the deposits, not both.

@balthisar: THIS.

I don't know why people are blaming the landlord here. He is not going after the family's money, it is going after the deceased money, which the deceased would have had to pay the landlord had he lived, regardless.

I understand that the family is grieving, and having to go through a long drawn out court procedure over this is a terrible thing, but really, they are fighting to keep money that wasn't really their's in the first place.

I guess I don't see what the issue is. Your estate owes any outstanding debts when you die. If you have a contract, it's still in effect. Emotion has nothing to do with it.

@alphafemale: The media here in South Florida is highly liberal--chances are they set up the shot on purpose so he could appear behind the hearse. Either way, it's a death sentence for the landlord to appear on television for the public; Internet searches be damned, Broward county is vicious when it comes to remembering something as rediculous as this.

Why not leave the corpse in the apartment and keep paying rent? That'll show 'em!

@alphafemale: If I am at the correct spot in the footage, I don't think it was a Hearse.It was a Lincoln Town Car with a Honda Element sitting right behind it giving the illusion of the Town Car having a Top over the back of it.

@Canino: Legally you are probably correct, but looking like a douchebag on and in the news isn't going to help this guy's business.

I may be wrong, and if I'm right it may vary from state to state, but if the estate ends up paying for the remainder of the lease, doesn't that preclude the landlord from renting the apartment until the lease is up? And wouldn't that also require the refund of the deposit (minus reasonable costs for rehabbing the unit)?

@anonymousryan:

Perhaps he was a miser.

Perhaps I should have looked up the details on 'Estate Tax' :D

@tph: I guarantee there is more to it than this. First, the guy's brother did a walk through of the apartment after calling the landlord after the death. Why wasn't this discussed? I have a feeling it may have been brought up by the family and then the landlord jumped this bill on him. Which is pretty shady.

Further, I'm not a contract lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that the ability of one half of a contract to follow through on the "letter of the contract" depends a lot on the type of contract and what the contract letter actually says.

That said, without seeing a copy of the contract it will be hard to say if the contract deals with the death of a tenant specifically. I'm guessing it doesn't based on the way that it's been handled. This probably creates an excessive amount of gray area for legal people to argue over.