Gables Residential (NYSE:GBP)
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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.