Consumer Protection Clinic Helps Low-Income Seniors Gain a Settlement for Excessive Rent Charges
Low-income seniors who were charged excessive rents will receive more than $166,000 in refunds under a class-action settlement reached after Minnesota Law’s Consumer Protection Clinic achieved a significant win at the Minnesota Supreme Court.
Professor Prentiss Cox '90, the clinic's supervising attorney, says the final settlement total of nearly $204,000 includes $28,000 for two nonprofits, CommonBond and Agate Housing and Services, to support their services to people experiencing housing issues. More than $8,000 of the total represents refunds that three class members who have since died would have received.
Clinic students were involved at every stage of the case, from researching issues before it was filed to drafting briefs that went to the Minnesota Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. Then clinic student Jordan Hughes ’22 argued the case before the appellate court. Minnesota Law magazine reported on the case in 2022.
“The students’ work on appealing the decision and succeeding on the appeal led to the final settlement, which resulted in 100% reimbursement to these low-income senior tenants who were overcharged by the defendants,” Cox says. “It was a complete win for the plaintiffs.”
The case—Linda Cobb Thompson v. St. Anthony Leased Housing Associates II, LP, et al., collectively referred to as Dominium—arose from a dispute between residents and the owner and manager of a rent-restricted housing unit. The Housing Justice Center, a nonprofit public interest law firm based in St. Paul, Minnesota, served as co-counsel.
The Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling stands to benefit other low-income tenants who live in rent-controlled apartments in Minnesota, Cox says. The decision clarified the standard for determining rent limits for low-income tenants of multi-family housing projects financed with state bonds. In return for lower financing costs on those bonds, developers must set aside 20% of units for low-income tenants, with a rent limit on those units.
The clinic contended—and a majority of six justices agreed—that the “area fair market rent” limit in Minnesota, under state law, is based on a federal fair market rent figure published annually for each area—and that the rent Dominium charged exceeded that limit. Dominium maintained that its rent did not exceed the limit set under a different standard by a local public housing authority.
Taking on ‘real problems’
Cox, who established the Consumer Protection Clinic and has led it for 20 years, says students who take a clinic often say that’s where they learn the most while at the Law School.
“Real problems have a complexity to them that can never really be translated into a classroom situation,” Cox says. “You engage at a completely different level when it’s real. You’re just motivated to do things in a way, to see it in a different way when it’s about people’s lives.”
Hughes said he appreciated the support of Cox and other Law School professors who conducted moot arguments in preparing to argue the case before the appeals court.
“It showed me the kind of preparation that representing a client takes and let me experience firsthand what it means to professionally and ethically represent someone to the very best of your ability,” Hughes says. “Seeing everyone who was a professional showing me how to do it, there’s really no better opportunity, in my opinion. It’s certainly the best I could have gotten.”
After graduating, Hughes clerked for then-Hennepin County District Court Judge Keala C. Ede, who is now on the Court of Appeals, and later for U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson.
Representing consumers in practice
Now Hughes is an associate in Berger Montague’s Minneapolis office, where he represents consumers and other clients in plaintiff’s side complex litigation involving consumer protection, public health, and environmental cases.
“The case went on for many years and went through many lawyers and many law students,” Hughes said. “I’m glad that at the end of it, there’s a great result for the client. Seeing some actual money going back to the renters, that there’s an actual cost to the landlords, that’s important.”
By Todd Nelson