Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in Ohio

I've advertised my house for rent/lease in carigslist and scheduled showings for 3-4 families on a weekend. One gentleman sent me an email after couple days that he is interested in lease to buy option and send me an initial offer. His offer ws $1550 per month and my asking price was $1699/month. I asked him few more details like credit score, employment etc.. he said his credit score is not good but sent me rest of the information asked. I was somehow not comfortable leasing it to him and in the mean time(within a week) I received another offer for $1699/mo and i rented it out to them. I told the first gemntleman that i can't lease it to him any more. He sent me an email asking for the reason why I did not lease to him and he is thinking of filing a dicrimination lawsuit against me that I have discriminated by his race, and for having young children etc... In fact, I have no idea how many young kids he has. Also, I rented to the same Race person last 2 years and at present. Both of my tenants have young children. I have no clue what this discrimination of housing means. I never had anything like that in mind. I'm an asian american and he is a white. He sent me an email the other day asking some questions like why I've rejected his offer. Should I reply to him or not? Please help.

There is also another story to this, when he came to see my house he parked his vehicle very close to mine, While I was moving my car little forward in the drive to give him more space the car came back little bit but didn't hit his. He filed a case that I hit his car. My insurance looked at my car and his and decided to fight in the court. But judge said since he has pictures of my car, he asked my insurance to pay him $450 for the repair. That day in the court he said he is going to file a discrimination case against me.

We're a very decent family and no bad intentions to whatsoever. We're so scared of this situation, this gentleman is very talkative and his company has a F rating in BBB and he has a very bad credit score (per him). Since we do not the courts and law here very well, we don't know what to do. Consulting a lawyer is an expensiveone and especially when you didn't do anything its even worse. Please help and sorry for my long email.


Asked on 9/22/11, 10:31 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Eric Willison Eric Eastman Willison

While there are laws in Ohio which prohibit discrimination based upon race and having children, your counterargument is that neither of those played a part in your decision not to rent to him. The fact that his credit score was no good, the fact that he was offering less than another renter, and the fact that he offered to enter into a land contract with you when what you wanted was to rent your property are all factors in your favor were this case to come to a lawsuit.

It is my understanding (and this may not be wholly correct so please don't rely upon it) that he must first take a discrimination case before the Ohio Civil Rights Commission and give them a chance to do an investigation into the allegations. Once they have investigated the case, they can either take up his case for him and act as his attorneys or they can give him a "right to sue" letter indicating that they are not interested in taking the case and that he may sue on his own if he would like. At that point, he can take the case to court.

You should review your insurance contract that you have on the property and talk your insurance company to see if the insurance policy covers you for such lawsuits. If it does, they will have a duty to defend you. If not, you may be stuck with paying for your legal defense out of your own pocket. However, if the lawsuit is deemed frivolous by the court, you may be able to prevail on an attorneys fees claim against him.

In the meantime, I would advise you to speak with a lawyer before writing him any kind of detailed response letter. If you want to write him an extremely short letter containing a general denial of his claims, that would be fine, but it should be one short paragraph, no more and should be in the most general terms possible. You should also indicate in the letter that your letter is a settlement negotiation in response to what you perceive as his settlement demand. This makes such letters inadmissible in later court proceedings.

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Answered on 9/22/11, 10:46 am


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