Tenant Nightmare! what should i do?

Question

I am OR landlord.

my previous tenant had bad intentions, he started accusing me of 1 thing or the other for last 4 months and I did not renew his lease. now he has accused me of retaliation and sent me demand letter without specifying any amounts, he doesn't want to discuss anything but sue me for large sums of damages.  he has a brother in law his attorney counsel.

I did a background search and found that tenant has been involved in 6 lawsuits over last 3 years, each involving him as plantiff and his brother-in-law representing him. They sue people, settle and he gets money, his brother-in-law gets attorney fees from defendants. there are 3 additional lawsuits from collection agencies against the tenant and his wife as well.

I contacted lawyers, they keep continuous $700 retainer fees, $275 for each letter, his brother-in-law will keep sending. I already received 2 vague demand letters, the return of the security deposit, etc.

lawyer thing is not working for me... I am afraid, it's just racking my bills. I want to pay him something to settle (I am not at any fault at all, except having bad luck), but his intention is not to get reasonable small sums. He doesn't want to meet or speak to me. Wants only letters mailed to him

what should i do?

can his intention be classified as "bad faith" or  "vexatious litigant" how?

Nathan Gesner · Answer

My suggestion? Stop responding.

He will continue to send you letters to scare something out of you. It's obviously working because you're already considering giving him some money to make this stop.

If you've done nothing wrong, stop responding to his letters. He will have to sue in court and then try to prove his claim. If you are abiding by the lease and obeying the law, you shouldn't be afraid of him suing because he won't be able to prove his case. Document everything and sit it out. Odds are he'll move on to the next easy target.

In the past year, I've had letters from two different attorneys threatening to sue me. The first one asked me to settle for $5,500 within 14 days. Despite multiple letters and phone calls, I continued to ignore them and they went away. The second one was from a big attorney that demanded payment of $23,000 within 30 days and made veiled threats about having my license revoked and my business closed. I sent that to my attorney, he sent them a quick response with a few questions, and we never heard back from them.

In modern society, attorneys make a lot of money getting people to settle out of court even when they've done no wrong. Even when you are 100% right, your own attorney make encourage you to settle just to make the case go away. That's because it's easy or him and he still gets paid. I prefer to stand up to the bully.