In this case,
again, our
clients were Northwestern University students who
rented an apartment in Evanston.
They gave a total security deposit of $2,650. After a walk-through
inspection of the apartment with the landlord on the last day of
their lease, June 30, 2010, the
tenants believed the landlord didn't have a problem with the unit's
condition.
A few weeks later one of the tenants e-mailed the
landlord to inquire about the deposit return.
According to the tenants, the first and only itemized
list sent by the landlord was an e-mail on July 31, 2010. But
the
landlords produced a print out of an e-mail dated July 20,
which was essentially identical to the July 31 e-mail, except it
listed "TBD" instead of dollar amounts for a list of damages.
All tenants denied seeing the e-mail ever, but the trial court
believed the landlord sent the email on the 20th.
The trial court decided the landlord's July 20 e-mail satisfied the Evanston Residential Landlord and
Tenant Ordinance (ERLTO)
5-3-5-1(C) requirement that the landlord send the
tenant the written amount of deductions from the security deposit
within 21 days. "TBD" meant "to be
determined."
We appealed the case to the Illinois Court of Appeals, and that
court reversed the trial court in an opinion excerpted to
the right.
The Appellate Court's Opinion also offered
helpful guidance about how landlords
can properly conduct themselves under the ERLTO and other security
deposit laws. The Court adhered to a 25-year-old policy
expressed in a case from Naperville called
Mallah v. Barkauskas (2nd Dist. 1985) which requires landlords
who cannot comply with accounting deadlines to return the security
deposit, and later sue the tenant for property damage once the cost
of repairs is fully ascertained. Keeping the deposit and not
accounting for it on time, however, is not allowed.
|
| |
2011 IL App (1st) 110851
[P21] * * *
If we were to adopt
defendants' position that they may list the dollar amount of any
deduction merely as "to be determined" in the 21-day notice, the
second sentence of section 5-3-5-1(C) would be completely
superfluous because if the amount that must be returned to the
tenant is unknown, then it is impossible to return that amount
within the 21-day period. Adopting defendants' position would
mean that a landlord could evade the 21-day return requirement
merely by giving a tenant notice of some unspecified damages,
rendering that deadline meaningless. We cannot accept an
interpretation of the ERLTO that would lead to such a result.
[P22] Contrary to defendants' position, we read the
plain language of the ERLTO to require a landlord, within 21
days of a tenant vacating the premises, to send written notice
to a tenant of any deductions that the landlord plans to
withhold from the security deposit in the form of an itemized
list with specific dollar amounts. Within that same 21-day
period, the landlord must also deliver to the tenant the balance
of the security deposit, minus the itemized deductions.
[P23] To the extent that the trial court found and
defendants now argue on appeal that a landlord is not required
to list a dollar amount for each item of damages if it is
reasonable under the circumstances not to, we can find no
support for this proposition in the ERLTO. Section 5-3-5-1(C)
mandates that a landlord "shall" provide the notice to the
tenant and "shall" return the security deposit within 21 days of
the end of the lease. There is no "reasonableness" exception to
this requirement in the express provisions of the ERLTO, and
when construing a statute we may not "read into the statute
exceptions, limitations, or conditions which the legislature did
not express."
|
|
|
