The city of Barre will pay a renter $10,000 — and pay her lawyers considerably more — for shutting off her water supply over her landlord’s failure to pay the bill. The payments settle a federal class-action lawsuit brought by Brenda Brown and another Barre renter in 2011.
According to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Burlington this week, Brown will receive $10,000 within 30 days, pending approval of the settlement by the Barre City Council next Tuesday.
The city will pay Brown’s lawyers at Vermont Legal Aid $59,862 in fees and costs. The Granite City will pay a second Barre renter, Earl Brooks, $500. He received an improper shut-off notice — but his taps were not actually turned off — because his landlord didn’t pay the water bill.
Barre Mayor Thom Lauzon said he expects the council to approve the settlement when it meets next Tuesday. All but $500 of the payments will be covered by the city’s insurer, the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, Lauzon said.
In July, U.S. District Judge Christina Reiss struck down Barre’s five-year-old water shut-off policy as unconstitutional because it doesn’t give renters an opportunity to appeal a shut-off notice.
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Bravo to Vermont Legal Aid. People can criticize lawyers all they want and complain about attorney’s fees, but if the lawyers and staff at VT Legal Aid don’t take on this case, many private lawyers won’t. The amount of fees incurred indicate that the landlord probably fought this lawsuit with their own lawyers and forced the legal aid people to keep fighting. Thankfully legal aid non-profit firms have just enough resources to be able to file these types of lawsuits and wait to get paid their fees at the end, if they succeed recalcitrant landlords need to know that a tenant has as much right to utilities as an owner. Social impact litigation!
Awesome. The aggrieved party gets $10,000 and her lawyers get $60,000. How proud they must be.