Our law firm was not involved in the case described in this article.
A tenant tripped in a tear in the carpet of her apartment unit and sued the apartment complex. In the complaint the tenant alleged breach of contract and violations of federal regulations governing the structural soundness of federally subsidized housing.[1]
The apartment complex moved to dismiss. The tenant moved to amend the complaint to add additional legal theories, including violation of the warranty of habitability and breach of the Residential Landlord-Tenant Act. The court granted the motion to amend.
Although the tenant’s attorney attached a copy of the proposed amended complaint to the motion to amend, the attorney never filed the amended complaint. Also, the amended complaint was never served.
The statute of limitations ran. The apartment then moved to dismiss the claims in the original complaint. The trial court granted the motion and dismissed the case.
The tenant appealed, arguing the apartment had actual notice of the claims in the amended complaint and that the claims in the original complaint should not have been dismissed.
The Court of Appeals disagreed. The Court noted that “the initial complaint is not entirely clear” but interpreted it to mean that the tenant was alleging that the apartment had breached its contract by violating a federal regulation. The Court agreed with the trial court judge that this regulation was not applicable to carpet tears.
The Court also agreed that the amended complaint having never been filed and having never been served the claims asserted in it were not before the trial court, and the statue of limitations having run could no longer be properly plead. The Court noted that “[o]btaining permission from the court to perform an act is not the same as actually performing the act.”
It is difficult to gauge whether this would likely have been a winning case for the tenant, but this was sloppy lawyering – at least as sloppy as the allegedly torn carpet.