Judge grants class action against Apartments Downtown

A district court judge has certified a class action filed by a tenants rights group against Apartments Downtown, Iowa City’s largest off-campus student housing provider.

In a ruling issued Wednesday, Judge Chad Kepros of Iowa’s Sixth Judicial District found that lease provisions used by Apartments Downtown were illegal, and he approved the certification of a class action lawsuit that had been in limbo the past five years.

The decision is a major victory for the Iowa Tenants Project, an Iowa City-based group that has pursued a number of class-action and small claims cases against Iowa City-area landlords — with Apartments Downtown and its owners, the Clark family, being its largest adversary.

The group, headed by attorney Christopher Warnock, initially filed for the class-action lawsuit in December 2010 on behalf of former tenant Michael Conroy and other renters, alleging the landlord was charging illegal fees and withholding unreasonable amounts from security deposits.

In Wednesday’s 11-page ruling, Kepros granted the tenants’ request for a partial summary and declaratory judgment — meaning the ruling is based on the existing facts in the case without it going to a trial, which had been set for November.

Kepros said in the ruling that several lease provisions used by Apartments Downtown “are illegal and should not have been included in the standard lease.”

Warnock said that, while Apartments Downtown could file an appeal, the ruling means that thousands of former tenants who rented under the lease in question will be owed damages. Warnock said that amount, including the possibility of punitive damages against the landlord, will be determined at a later bench trial.

“This is huge,” Warnock said. “Basically it’s the largest student landlord in Iowa City, and they’ve fought us tooth and nail, but they’ve been found guilty. All the fees they charged illegally, knowingly or unknowingly, they’ve got to give that back.”

A message left with Apartments Downtown seeking comment was not returned Wednesday.

Warnock said the leases challenged by the class action lawsuit were used by Apartments Downtown from 2010 through 2014, and he estimates that they covered at least 6,000 tenants in that time. Warnock said Apartments Downtown has since rewritten its lease.

The class action lawsuit argued that the lease violated tenants’ rights by charging an automatic carpet cleaning fee, whether the carpet was clean or not; having provisions that shifted responsibility for repair and maintenance to tenants, including in common areas of a building; and including a variety of illegal fees, penalties and other charges.

The judge found in favor of the tenants on all points. On the carpet cleaning issue, for instance, Kepros wrote that Iowa law requires that a landlord “provide a tenant with a specific reason for withholding any of the rental deposit, and also requires the landlord to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, the reason for withholding any of the rental deposit, with ordinary wear and tear excepted.”

Kepros also ruled that, unless a landlord can show that a tenant caused damage beyond ordinary wear and tear that resulted from deliberate or negligent acts, it cannot shift repair and maintenance responsibilities to a renter.

“Hopefully this will be a wake-up call just for not just the Clarks, but for all landlords in Iowa City that you need to clean up your leases and treat your tenants fairly,” Warnock said.

Warnock said that once the court rules on the damages, a database of the names of past Apartments Downtown tenants affected by the lease in question will be collected. Those tenants will likely be contacted through mailings and other means to inform them they are entitled to money, he said.

Reach Josh O’Leary at joleary@press-citizen.com or 887-5415, and follow him on Twitter at @JD_OLeary.