Difference between revisions of "Georgia Ethics Code Does Not Apply To Fulton Judges"

The easiest way to pull this off, and every landlord attorney with half a brain knows this, is to demand some absurd amount so as to induce the tenant not to pay any money at all. Imagine if you owe one month of rent, for say $2,000, and your landlord demands $4,000 due within three (3) days for both the preset month and the previous month’s rent that you know for a fact you already paid. The natural result by any rational and unsuspecting tenant is to not pay a dime! Then the landlord will file with the court to have the tenant evicted and will inevitably win—though the money judgment will naturally be less than requested by the landlord in the original eviction complaint. And thus, the staged eviction is completed in manner that appears “legal enough” so as to avoid criminal prosecution.

So what can a tenant do to defend against this? The key is in the notice provisions set by the lease agreement and/or Georgia statute. A landlord will likely cut corners to outwit a scared tenant in a timely manner—which means the landlord is more likely to botch the very rigid process mandated by law. There is also criminal liability for anyone who intentionally files a false dispossessory affidavit, though getting those types of cases prosecuted is presumed to be very difficult—or else landlords would not do this so prevalently.

As an experienced landlord-tenant attorney—often times defending tenants—over time I have been privy to witnessing behavioral patterns of many landlord attorneys and the judges that are complicit with these tactics, and it is sad to say the least.