If Legal Action of Wisconsin, Inc, 274 lawyers, 7 judges and 2 court commissioners,have it their way, all indigent persons that are involved in civil lawsuits involving issues of “basic human needs” will be given a free lawyer.
According to a recent Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article and ABA Journal article the Wisconsin Supreme Court has been petitioned and asked to require that all indigent persons involved in civil lawsuits that involve issues impacting an individual’s basic human needs, such as sustenance, shelter, clothing, heat, medical care, safety, and child custody and placement, be provided a free lawyer to represent them in th elegal proceedings.
The proposed cost on taxpayers would be anywhere from $50 million to $80 million per year.
If this “civil Gideon rule” is passed you can expect that almost every tenant that wants one will be given a free lawyer to defend them in an eviction action. This will greatly affect landlords on many fronts. First, it will result in a delay in the overall process of removing a tenant from a rental unit thus allowing the tenant to remain in the rental unit longer and result in the landlord losing more rent. Second, it will increase a landlord’s costs by (most likely) increasing the cost to file an eviction action, and then result in higher attorney’s fees should the landlord opt to retain a lawyer; if the landlord handles the eviction himself/herself then s/he will lose more time and money by having to take off work. Third, assuming that the $50 million – $80 million estimated costs to pay for the “free lawyers” are not entirely covered by an increase in civil filing fees, landlords will most likely see an increase in taxes in some way, shape, or form.
Since the majority of the eviction cases that I encounter involve the tenant not paying rent and has no legal defense, I see this proposed rule as only causing additional court congestion and delay.
In a state such as Wisconsin, which already has very tenant-friendly laws and regulations to begin with, and has courts that often go out of their way to give tenant’s additional time to vacate (in violation of state statutes), and even goes so far as to provide legal advice to tenants (which they should not be doing), this civil Gideon rule, if passed, will make it even more difficult for landlords to continue to survive in the rental industry.
Added October 19, 2010 — Here is a recent blog post by David Ziemer of the Wisconsin Law Journal about the Civil Gideon rule.
#1 by John (Dr Rent) Fischer on October 5th, 2010
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This is one of those issues that I am on the fence about….
I am not a big fan for paying for other people’s stuff, I have a hard enough time paying for my stuff… so to basically be paying (through taxes or court costs I assume) for my tenant’s attorney… not a fan of that at all.
On the other hand… I have seen some not very ethical landlords use their better understanding of court procedures to evict tenants when the tenant did have a legitmate counter-claim. Knowing that your tenant may show up with an attorney would go a long way to make sure that landlords follow the rules, give the proper notices, etc.
This is where I am torn… I normally support things that require us all to play by the same rules, I normally support rules that make the worst in our industry bring up their standards, because lets face it… landlords DO have a bad rap, and that bad rap is caused by less than 5% of the bad apples.
However…. I also have problems with things that punish everyone.. good landlords and bad landlords…
If there was a way that low-income tenants could be taken care of against bad landlords in a way that didn’t impact good landlords… I would be fully on board…
#2 by joe johnson on March 26th, 2011
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Well, Mr.Fischer
I do agree with the idea that there are some landlords who have taken advantage of the law and evicted their tenants in a retalitory fashion.
But then again, there are many tenants that request jury trials to damage the landlord’s pocket. In the end, jury trial should only be reserved for non-civil matters, for criminal proceedings. A jury trial is an unnesscary burden on the taxpayer. Especially for a simple eviction case. The tenant is in the wrong first for not paying rent. Unless there are special circumstances that caused the absence of rent for the months.