If you're renting a storage locker and you get into a dispute with the owners, do you need a lawyer?
Yes.
Yes, you do.
In general, when you have a dispute, you need to consult a lawyer. And I don't just say that because I'm a lawyer. I say that because lawyers, so unnecessary to human society in general, are necessary to litigation because we've made it be that way.
If you eliminated all the lawyers in the world, what do you think would happen? Probably nothing, to be honest. I would have to go get a different job -- probably something in show business, I'm thinking -- but people would still have to settle their disputes and would still find ways to do so.
But we can't eliminate all the lawyers in the world, not yet, anyway, and since there are lawyers in the world, you need to have a lawyer if you have a legal problem. I tell people that all the time. I say these exact words to them:
If you have a medical problem, you go to a doctor. If you have a car problem, you go to a mechanic. If your tooth hurts, you go to a dentist, and if you have a legal problem, call a lawyer.
Law is one of those professional areas where people feel as though they can handle it themselves, and mostly, they can't. Especially if there are lawyers on the other side. Our society has evolved into a complex one with more rules than most people are even aware exist -- even rules lawyers don't know exist.
So when the question of whether you need a lawyer arises, the answer is yes. If you consult a lawyer and the problem is a simple one, well, it won't cost you too much money. If you consult a lawyer and the problem is more complicated, well, it might cost you more money -- but if you've got a complicated legal problem, you definitely want a lawyer.
But don't just take it from me that you need a lawyer. There's a good case that shows why:
Cook v. Public Storage, Inc.
Zachary Luckett, in 2004, rented a storage locker. The contract listed him as the lessee and also noted that he was letting other people, notably his parents, have access to the locker. After signing the contract, Zachary let his parents use the storage locker for their own items.
For most of a year, the rent on the storage locker was paid, albeit late. In July, 2005, though, the rent was not paid and Public Storage sent out first a notice of default and then a "notice of lien and sale."
Many people don't know that landlords -- including storage locker landlords-- can hold your stuff, charge you money for holding your stuff, and then sell it to pay for the money they charged you to hold your stuff. And that's what Public Storage was doing to Zachary: charging him money for selling his stuff, because when a landlord holds your stuff like that, they get a "lien" on the property.
When the rent remained unpaid, Public Storage held a "blind auction:" they sold the goods in the locker, sight unseen, and netted all of $600. They took the $600 and applied it to Zachary's account, and paid all the charges he'd incurred...
... leaving $407 behind. That's right: all of Zachary's (and his parent's) stuff was sold -- blindly-- because he owed less than $200.
Public Storage then listed the $407 as "pre-paid rent" on their ledgers, even though Zachary's stuff had been sold and he was no longer renting a storage locker, so far as Public Storage was concerned.
That's when the fun begins, and the complications. (For lawyers, complications = fun. For laypeople/clients, complications = expensive.)
Zachary had not actually read through the contract, it seems -- particularly the provisions that said that only he could store property in the locker, and that if Public Storage was sued it would probably not owe him anything, but at most might owe him only $5,000. Zachary also hadn't paid attention to the fact that public storage had an incorrect address for him on the contract.
But that address might be important, if, for example, Zachary wanted to receive letters from Public Storage letting him know that his stuff was going to be sold for $600.
Public Storage ignored a lot of things, too. Like the fact that the notices they sent Zachary were returned as undeliverable. Public Storage ignored that. Public Storage ignored, too, that they had phone numbers and a correct address in their own files, an address they didn't bother sending notices to.
This all came to a head when, unaware that their stuff had been sold for $600, Zachary's parents tried to come to pay rent in August, 2005 on the storage locker. They were told, then, that the property had been sold -- but given no more information. They weren't told how much the property had been sold for and were not told that $407 of the proceeds of the sale were being held by Public Storage for no good reason.
When Zachary's parents tried to get more information, Public Storage told them:
"Get a lawyer."
That turned out to be amazingly good advice. They did get a lawyer, and their lawyer wrote to Public Storage and got them their $407 back. But that's not all their lawyer did. Their lawyer did what lawyers do best: he sued the pants off them, almost literally. Zachary and his parents (the Cooks of the caption) sued Public Storage for, among other things, "conversion."
"Conversion," as I tell my clients a lot, is a fancy lawyer word for "theft." (If we called it theft, or the even more simple stealing people's stuff, then you'd start thinking you don't need a lawyer.)
In Wisconsin, under some circumstances, "conversion" can lead to triple damages. If you steal people's stuff, in Wisconsin, you can be sued for triple the losses. (It gets worse than that, too. I'm foreshadowing.)
So the Cooks sued for conversion of their $407, because Public Storage had no right to keep that, and for conversion of their stuff, because Public Storage, they said, had no right to sell their stuff without notifying them.
And they won (mostly; things are always complicated.) The jury ruled that the Cooks' stuff was worth $5,000, not $600, and awarded the Cooks...
$119,000.
The jury gave the Cooks $19,000 in compensatory damages -- money to compensate the Cooks for their losses, and $100,000 in punitive damages.
The case wasn't over yet. Under the law, the Cooks were entitled to an award of attorney's fees. The judge considered the case and made an initial ruling that the Cooks' lawyers were to be paid...
$262,500.
Here's where it gets even more fun. And complicated. And expensive. Public Storage appealed. And they won, on two of their claims. The Wisconsin Court of Appeals decided that Public Storage was right about two claims. It then ruled that even though Public Storage was right about those two, and the Circuit Court was wrong, it didn't matter -- the errors were deemed harmless.
The Court should have stolen a line from Douglas Adams, though, and deemed the errors "mostly harmless," because the errors did require that the trial judge reconsider the award of attorney's fees. Which the judge did.
She awarded the Cook's $282,154.02 in attorney's fees.
Do you need a lawyer?
You sure do. Public Storage can give you $282,154.02 reasons why.
People ask me, often, What is consumer law? And I tell them that it's hard to explain but that it boils down to if you think you've been hurt by a business, talk to me.
"Consumer law" is one of those I know it when I see it kind of law practices. For example, if someone walked into my law office and wondered if she could sue a hairdresser for damaging her scalp so badly that she had to shave her head and start all over again, I'd say: That's a consumer law case.
Also, I'd say "I'm really sorry about what you had to go through."
That's what Vjerana Harasic claimed happened. Ms. Harasic went into Boston Store back in September 2004 (see how long court cases take?). She says that she told Boston Store's stylists that she wanted her hair lightened. Complicating things were the facts that Ms. Harasic had already been to another stylist, didn't like what happened, and had tried to wash the color out of her hair using Palmolive soap.
Boston Store and Ms. Harasic then differ on exactly what happened next. Ms. Harasic says that Boston Store made some promises about what they'd do, then didn't do that. She said her scalp was irritated and she had numbness, and her face was itching. She left the salon, looked in a mirror, saw scalp irritation, and returned, where she was (she claims) given aloe by an "esthetician."
Things went from bad to worse, according to Ms. Harasic. She came back the next day, was given a refund for the previous day's work, and Boston Store treated her again -- leading to more irritation, more numbness, and throbbing headaches. She had to eventually seek treatment from another stylist, who advised her to shave her head. That led to symptoms of depression.
Boston Store tells it a little differently. According to them, Ms. Harasic never told them of past reactions to hair treatments, and never told them about present reactions.
So Ms. Harasic sued Boston Store, and before everyone jumps all over the place yelling frivolous lawsuits and complaining about lawyers, keep in mind two things: First, Ms. Harasic was a computer consultant looking for jobs, and she had to do so while she was bald. She believed that interfered with her ability to get work. Second, Ms. Harasic was doing this on her own. Initially, Ms. Harasic's complaint was dismissed -- Boston Store won. But then Ms. Harasic appealed, and the Wisconsin Court of Appeals reversed that, letting her go back to court to get a trial. (You can read that appellate opinion here, if you'd like. It's "unpublished," which means that you can't ever mention it in court. But you can blog about it.)
That sent the case back to the Circuit Court, with the parties then litigating in earnest until a trial was held on October 20, 2008 -- more than four years after the original injury -- lasting about three days.
Unfortunately for Ms. Harasic, and fortunately for Boston Store, it appears that she didn't end up getting any compensation for her claims of injuries. It's not apparent -- for complicated reasons -- whether the jury ruled against her or whether she won but won by too little (something that can happen -- you can win but lose in court, but that would require its own article to explain someday) but in the end, Ms. Harasic owed Boston Store $2,345.40 for its costs.
Does that mean the case should not have been brought? Maybe, maybe not. At one point Boston Store made an "offer of judgment," which is a legal maneuver whereby a defendant offers to let a plaintiff recover a certain amount of money -- so Boston Store, for its own reasons, was willing to pay something to Ms. Harasic, while she, for her own reasons, decided not to accept that offer.
In determining whether the case was worthwhile or not, remember that hindsight is always 20/20, and we don't know what the offer to settle was, or, like I said, what the jury found. I've emailed the attorney for Boston Store to try to find that out, and I'll update accordingly.
But in the meantime, a couple of things to keep in mind that can be learned from Ms. Harasic's case.
First, as I say a lot, consulting a lawyer is never a bad idea. It would only cost a couple hundred dollars, tops, to talk to a lawyer about whether you've got a case or not. Some lawyers might take a case like this on a contingent fee basis. Lawyers may also be aware of regulations and laws that apply which you may not know about -- for example, there are regulations governing what services can be provided and other standards and practices.
Second, lawyers will frequently tell you this, and so will I: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Any time a settlement offer is made, it has to be seriously considered -- because if you go ahead, you might look back and say I wish I'd taken that.
Third, not everything needs to go to a lawsuit -- but if someone's been injured by conduct that falls below an acceptable level of care, society wants to make sure that the guilty party, not the innocent party, bears the costs of that injury. If two sides disagree about what, exactly, happened, and who, exactly, is responsible for that -- well, then, that's why we have courts in the first place.
Reading the long disproved labyrinthine syllogistic "economic science" of Karl Marx is not a crime, though perusal of its turgid marshalling of preconceived prejudices may well be a form of punishment.
-- Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Nathan Heffernan, commenting on a probation officer’s reference to, and trial judge’s reliance on, a defendant’s reading of ‘Das Kapital’ in sentencing.
You could be a thousand bucks richer, right now. More, actually, if you were to add in the money you'd be saving by paying your actual mortgage payment, instead of the mortgage payment on your bill.
Here's how and why you could be a thousand bucks richer: The Federal Trade Commission in September, 2008, reached a settlement with Bear Stearns and EMC Mortgage. As part of the settlement, Bear Stearns and EMC (which is a subsidiary of Bear Sterns) agreed to pay out $28 million. That's why I'm writing about this now; the payments that Bear Stearns has started to make are starting to arrive in people's mailboxes -- because Bear Stearns has started paying that $28 million to borrowers who were (allegedly) affected by its (alleged) actions.
Here's part of why the FTC sued those companies: they were ripping you off.
Well, maybe not you.
But they were ripping people off. The FTC alleged-- that means accused, but hadn't yet proven-- that Bear Stearns and EMC were ripping people off by charging them too much on their mortgage. (There was a lot more going on there, too -- allegedly-- but I'll focus on the part about ripping you off, because that's how you could make some money.)
As we all know by now, when you borrow money for a house, the original lender almost never stays your lender. Instead, it gets sold and resold and resold, as companies peel a little money off of it here and there (the golden crumbs Tom Wolfe once wrote about.) That means that the company who ultimately holds your mortgage -- the company you are actually paying the money back to -- knows almost nothing about your actual mortgage.
Which makes the mortgage "servicer" an important person or company. The servicer collects your money and applies it to your account. The servicer sends out the monthly statements telling you what you've paid and what you owe. The servicer may be your original lender, or it may be a new company. The servicer may change from time to time, too, as different companies use different servicers.
Servicers gather a lot of information -- information on how much you owe, what the interest rate is, how much you should escrow for taxes and insurance, when those need to be paid, and a lot more.
Imagine, now, if a servicer got just a tiny mistake in your information. What effect would that have? Let's take a look. Suppose you borrowed $150,000 over thirty years at 6% interest. Your monthly payment amount (not counting taxes and other things) would be $899.33 per month. Over the course of thirty years, if you just kept paying, you'd pay back the loan plus a total of $173,758.80 in interest -- so you'd pay back a total of $323,758.80 for your $150,000 loan.
Now, suppose that a servicer makes just a little tiny typo in your loan. They type in the amount borrowed as "$151,000" instead of $150,000. An easy enough error to make, right?
If your servicer did that, your payment would only go up to $905.32 per month -- so small that you might not immediately notice it; it's only $6 more per month. But you'd repay $325,915.20 -- so that small error costs you two thousand dollars.
If, instead, your servicer types in a different wrong number, types in 6.1% interest instead of "6%", your payment would go up to $915.05, and that error would cost you about $6,000 over the course of your loan.
But wait -- as they say -- there's more. If you don't catch the error and go on paying $899.33 per month, then your payments aren't sufficient anymore. So each month, your servicer is going to apply the payment differently -- they'll impose late fees, for one thing, and they may not apply your payment at all, because these things are computerized and if your payment doesn't match what the computer thinks should be there, your payment may get stuck in a "suspense account," and before you know it, you're in default.
Luckily for you, and unluckily for Bear Sterns and EMC Mortgage, there are laws that may prohibit that kind of thing. There's the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). The "FDCPA," which you can read here if you're into that sort of thing (it's pretty boring to read a statute) prohibits "debt collectors" from taking certain actions that have been ruled out-of-bounds by Congress.
Among the things the FDCPA prohibits are falsely representing the amount of the debt that's owed. Which means if a debt collector sends you a bill that doesn't show the correct amount that you owe, that debt collector has done something illegal.
Not everyone who sends you a bill is a "debt collector." Keep that in mind: there are very specific rules about who is, or is not, a "debt collector."
Now here's the fun part: not only is it illegal for an FDCPA "debt collector" to send you an incorrect bill, but if they do, you might get yourself a thousand bucks. If not more.
See, if a debt collector violates the FDCPA in any way, then you -- the person who suffered the violation -- can sue the debt collector, and can be awarded $1,000 in what they call "statutory damages." "Statutory damages" are money you get just for proving a debt collector violated the law. You can also get "actual damages," which is money to compensate for the harm the debt collector caused you by violating the law.
And, because attorney's are expensive, if you win, the debt collector will have to pay your attorney's fees.
So the FTC -- remember, that's where we began-- looked at Bear Stearns and EMC and accused them of violating (among other laws) the FDCPA in a variety of ways. And rather than fight that out in court Bear Stearns and EMC decided to pay out $28 million in settlements.
Sending out notices containing the wrong amount owed is just one of the ways a debt collector might violate the law -- and remember, not everyone's a debt collector. Also, the FDCPA doesn't penalize innocent mistakes; debt collectors are people, too, and people can make mistakes without getting their pants sued off.
So what's the lesson here?
Read your mortgage statements! If the amount changes for any reason, call the mortgage servicer and ask why. Have them document the reasons in writing.
Every now and then, double check things. It's easy to do. You know how much your original amount borrowed was and how much you're paying. So once or twice a year, go to a mortgage calculator like this one and double-check your statements to see if the payments are being applied correctly and the math works out. I know -- you don't like to do math. But maybe you'll catch an error and save yourself some money.
Or make some. Because a thousand bucks could really help out, couldn't it?
Here's a question for you: What rules apply to your bank accounts?
Do you know?
Do you need to know?
Would you be better off if you didn't know?
Ask Sandra Roney about that. Sandra Roney is a wedding photographer who in 2006 received an email hiring her. The customer sent Roney a check for $7,400 -- which was more than double the actual $3,159 fee that Roney was going to charge for the package. The customer then told Roney that the check had been erroneously sent and asked that she refund the difference to her.
That, by the way, was a scam. It's the "419" scam that's so popular: Someone sends a cashier's check for more than you were expecting, and then asks you to refund the difference. The cashier's check is, in the scam, bogus, and if you try to deposit it, it will bounce -- by which time you'll have sent the money to the scammer and you'll be out the money, plus probably overdrawn.
Roney wasn't so dumb, though. She took the check to her bank, Associated Banc-Corp., and asked them whether it was good, and they said it was. In fact, they told her three times it was good. So Roney deposited the check in her business account and sent the requested refund to her scam-artist/customer.
The check was not good, and Roney's account became overdrawn when the check was dishonored. That left Roney unable to run her business adequately-- specifically, she couldn't pay for some of the advertising that she'd had in the past, and she lost profits. Associated Bank began bouncing Roney's other checks and charging her overdraft fees.
Then the Bank sued Roney -- remember that, when you think about whether you should be loyal to your bank-- for the overdrafts and fees.
Roney countersued the Bank, claiming that she'd been the victim of their misrepresentations. (Misrepresentations are what laypeople call "lies.")
Associated Bank's theory was that Roney had breached the Bank's account rules by depositing the check (even though they told Roney the check was valid.) Roney said she didn't know about the rules the Bank was claiming applied, and the Bank pointed out that the rules were freely available to her.
Roney was right, and the Bank was wrong. The law says that a contract, including a contract between a Bank and a depositor setting up a bank account, includes only those terms that both parties agree on, and for both parties to agree on terms to a contract, it has to be shown that both knew about the terms. Put more simply, the law says that the Bank had to prove it told Roney about the rules it claimed she violated, and the Bank didn't do that.
That meant that Roney's path was cleared to continue suing the Bank for the losses she incurred as the victim of the 419 scam, as well as losses to her business when checks began bouncing.
There's a whole lot more to the case than that. (There usually is.) If you'd like to read the entire Court of Appeals' decision, you can do so here. (Keep in mind that this decision is unpublished. In Wisconsin, that means that you can talk about it anywhere but in Court.)
But there are a couple of lessons to be learned here:
First, it would probably still be better to know the rules of your bank account. Those brochures and mailings they send you (and the same kinds of things sent to you by your mortgage lender and credit card companies) are boring and in small type but they're important.Knowing is always better than not knowing.
Second, ask for advice. In my opinion, one thing that helped Roney was that she first asked the Bank if the check was any good.
Family And Consumer Law -- The Blog-- is intended for general informational purposes only and is not intended to provide specific legal advice to any given person. Every situation is different and the application of laws and cases to a specific set of facts may mean that your own personal situation will not turn out like the cases and situations mentioned on this site. No attorney-client relationship is created by reading this blog and you are not represented by Attorney Briane Pagel or the Krekeler Strother, S.C., law firm unless you have signed a written agreement hiring him or that firm. If you wish to pursue or receive specific legal advice from Attorney Pagel you may contact him at the addresses and phone numbers here.
The views on this blog are those of attorney Pagel only and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Krekeler Strother, S.C. law firm and/or any employees or partners in that firm. As a lawyer, Attorney Pagel reserves the right to express one opinion on this blog and an entirely different opinion elsewhere.
Attorney Pagel is licensed to practice only in the State of Wisconsin. Nothing on this blog should be construed as expressing an opinion or attempting to practice anywhere else in the world.
Go to the end for addresses and phone numbers. But first:
READ THIS! It's important:
Family And Consumer Law -- The Blog-- is intended for general informational purposes only and is not intended to provide specific legal advice to any given person. Every situation is different and the application of laws and cases to a specific set of facts may mean that your own personal situation will not turn out like the cases and situations mentioned on this site. No attorney-client relationship is created by reading this blog and you are not represented by Attorney Briane Pagel or the Krekeler Strother, S.C., law firm unless you have signed a written agreement hiring him or that firm. If you wish to pursue or receive specific legal advice from Attorney Pagel you may contact him at the addresses and phone numbers below.
The views on this blog are those of attorney Pagel only and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Krekeler Strother, S.C. law firm and/or any employees or partners in that firm. As a lawyer, Attorney Pagel reserves the right to express one opinion on this blog and an entirely different opinion elsewhere.
Attorney Pagel is licensed to practice only in the State of Wisconsin. Nothing on this blog should be construed as expressing an opinion or attempting to practice anywhere else in the world.
Topics I've Discussed:
About the Author:
Briane F. Pagel, Jr., is a lawyer with Krekeler Strother, S.C., where he has been practicing family and consumer law since 2000. Prior to that, he ran his own practice. He graduated with honors from the University of Wisconsin Law School, and has an undergraduate degree in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Briane Pagel writes consumer law case updates for other lawyers. He has published two articles in Wisconsin Lawyer: "After the Split: The Marital Property Act's Effects on Debt After Marriage," and "Sounding The Death Knell," an article examining the status of forced consumer arbitration. He has spoken to lawyers' groups and presented seminars on topics ranging from the Doctrine of Necessaries to enforcement of Wisconsin's mortgage broker and consumer laws and presented a lecture at the State Bar Convention on the far-reaching effects of arbitration agreements.
Briane has received the CALI Excellence for the Future Award for achievements in the study of family law, and was the recipient of the 1995 Russell Bonfiglio Memorial Scholarship.
Also, he once met Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and hung out with him for nearly an hour.
He can be contacted by mail at:
Krekeler Strother, S.C. 15 N. Pinckney Street, Suite 200 Madison, WI 53703
But don't just take it from me that you need a lawyer. There's a good case that shows why:
's) stuff was sold -- blindly-- because he owed less than $200.
That's what Vjerana Harasic claimed happened. Ms. Harasic went into Boston Store back in September 2004 (see how long court cases take?). She says that she told Boston Store's stylists that she wanted her hair lightened. Complicating things were the facts that Ms. Harasic had already been to another stylist, didn't like what happened, and had tried to wash the color out of her hair using Palmolive soap.
Does that mean the case should not have been brought? Maybe, maybe not. At one point Boston Store made an "offer of judgment," which is a legal maneuver whereby a defendant offers to let a plaintiff recover a certain amount of money -- so Boston Store, for its own reasons, was willing to pay something to Ms. Harasic, while she, for her own reasons, decided not to accept that offer.
The more things stay the same, the more they stay the same: A look at a 1981 WCA case. 
Here's how and why you could be a thousand bucks richer: The Federal Trade Commission in September, 2008, reached a settlement with Bear Stearns and EMC Mortgage. As part of the settlement, Bear Stearns and EMC (which is a subsidiary of Bear Sterns) agreed to pay out $28 million. That's why I'm writing about this now; the payments that Bear Stearns has started to make are starting to arrive in people's mailboxes -- because Bear Stearns has started paying that $28 million to borrowers who were (allegedly) affected by its (alleged) actions.
If, instead, your servicer types in a different wrong number, types in 6.1% interest instead of "6%", your payment would go up to $915.05, and that error would cost you about $6,000 over the course of your loan.
more.
Most recent listed first:
Lawyers run amok! Or were they? Why creativity doesn't equal frivolous.
terms to a contract, it has to be shown that both knew about the terms. Put more simply, the law says that the Bank had to prove it told Roney about the rules it claimed she violated, and the Bank didn't do that.
You can't sue a lender for negligence in Wisconsin. (Probably?) 
