Strauss Malk & Feder’s litigation team successfully obtained the dismissal of a class action case filed against our apartment complex owner and property manager for alleged ordinance violations in our clients’ residential apartment leases. This dismissal of the case saved our clients well over $2,000,000 in potential liability.

The plaintiffs, who were tenants at our clients’ apartment complex in Schaumburg, Illinois had claimed that our clients had violated the Cook County Residential Tenant and Landlord Ordinance (the “RTLO”) by failing to disclose in tenants’ apartment leases all building code violations that had been cited in the building for the 12 months prior to the time the lease was signed. For that claimed ordinance violation, the plaintiffs were seeking recovery from our clients for each tenant of one month’s rent, plus the right for each tenant to terminate his or her lease, plus attorneys’ fees and costs of suit. In addition, the plaintiffs claimed that our clients’ leases also violated the RTLO by including a prohibited class action waiver clause in the tenants’ apartment leases. For that alleged ordinance violation, the plaintiffs were seeking recovery of two months’ rent for each tenant, plus attorneys’ fees, costs and other relief.

Our litigation team, however, successfully moved to have the plaintiffs’ claims dismissed on grounds that the tenants’ leases were not governed by the RTLO but rather by the Village of Schaumburg Code’s regulations for residential leases. As our litigation team explained to the court, and as the court agreed, where a municipality has its own apartment lease regulations and remedies for violations of those remedies, the RTLO, by its own terms, does not apply to leases in that municipality. Therefore, finding that our clients’ apartment leases were not governed by the RTLO, the court dismissed the plaintiffs’ entire case.