If my landlord takes me to court for an eviction, can he charge me his attorney fees?
March 19th, 2011 | 
Author: I am in Ohio and am currently in a month-to-month lease. I was given a 30 day written eviction notice by the landlord to be out before the end of January. I am in the process of buying a house and may not be able to be out within the 30 days he gave me. I have asked him to extend the eviction to the end of February so that I can close on my new house and he said absolutely not. I have never been late on a payment and am being evicted for taking him to court in order to get things fixed in the house that I am renting. The case was dismissed because he doesn’t own more than three rental properties, and I was given an eviction notice. So if we have to actually go to court for the eviction, do I have to pay the court costs and his attorney fees?
Posted in Landlord Tenant Law
If he wins, sadly, yes.
Read your lease, it may say that he is entitled to attorney’s fees, collection costs, etc. The winner usually gets court costs.
Court costs are usually paid by the loser. I’m sure that by now you realize that taking a landlord to court isn’t a very smart thing to do. Don’t you have any apt complexes who will take you on a month-by-month basis? As long as a person isn’t evicted for race, sex or religion reasons a landlord can pretty much evict anyone he wants to. A neighbor down the hall from me finally got evicted because someone in the rental office said that she was always causing a lot of trouble and they were tired of it (I work in the rental office 1/2 the year so they probably didn’t feel that they were violating any rules of disclosure).