New Report Finds 'Unreasonable' Attorney Fees Are Being Charged to Tenants in Eviction Cases
Most of the time, the tenant is not present in court to raise any objection to the fees, and even when they are, most of the time they don’t know they can raise an objection.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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On one day in September in Fredericksburg General District Court, 12 tenants facing eviction in the city were charged a total of almost $11,000 in fees to compensate their landlords’ attorneys.
Those fees were on top of what the court ordered tenants to pay back in overdue rent—amounts ranging from $1,400 to $5,200, plus 6% interest and court fees—adding to a cycle of debt that can become impossible to pay off.
A report issued last month by the Virginia Poverty Law Center and Virginia Commonwealth University’s RVA Eviction Lab found that it has become more common since the COVID-19 pandemic for courts to order that tenants pay such “excessive” attorney fees.
“In 2024, in residential eviction cases across Virginia, judges awarded nearly $18 million in attorney fees. This represents a 48% increase from pre-COVID levels in 2019 (adjusted for inflation), even as the number of eviction judgments decreased by 19%,” the report states.
For Alexander Reidell, managing attorney at Legal Aid Works’s Fredericksburg office since 2017 and one of two attorneys working on housing issues locally, the report “highlights an issue that’s been on my mind—and on a lot of our minds—for years now.”
“We’ve been trying to do what we can to push back and spread awareness of excessive attorney fees,” Reidell said. “All it does is push low-income residents even further into a hole that often wasn’t their fault in the first place. [Evictions can happen as a result of] job loss, family emergency, medical emergency—a whole host of things that can happen to any one of us. These fees make it that much harder to get out of the hole and start rebuilding their lives.”
‘Reasonable’ Attorney Fees
The Virginia Supreme Court over a century ago determined that any attorney fees charged to defendants in court cases—in eviction cases, that’s the tenants—must be “reasonable,” and this decision has been “consistently upheld,” according to the report.
Judges are supposed to review attorney fees to ensure that they are reasonable, considering “the time to be consumed, the effort to be expended, the nature of services to be rendered, and any other relevant circumstances,” according to a 1991 Virginia Supreme Court decision quoted in the report.
“Despite the Virginia Supreme Court’s clear guidance, tenants and their advocates report that in many General District Courts throughout Virginia, judges rarely review attorney fee amounts or mention any of the factors they are supposed to consider,” the report states. “Instead of weighing the time and tasks actually performed by the landlord’s attorney, judges often approve attorney fees calculated as a percentage of rent and other amounts due, either because the lease specifies this formula or as a simple rule of thumb.”
Reidell said it’s become an accepted norm locally for law firms to ask for, and judges to award, a fee representing a flat 25% of what the tenant is claimed to owe in back rent, no matter how much or how little time the attorney gives to the case.
“The overwhelming majority [of work for the attorney] is just basically checking numbers on a balance sheet to see how much rent hasn’t been paid,” Reidell said. “I would be hard pressed to say that takes any significant amount of time.”
Most of the time, the tenant is not present in court to raise any objection to the fees, and even if the tenant is present, Reidell said, “99% of the time” they don’t know they can raise an objection.
“So it really is left a lot up to the judge’s own discretion, and many, many times, they will just give the rubber stamp” to whatever the landlord’s attorney asks for, he said.
Prevalence of Default Judgements
According to the report, 79% of eviction filings in Virginia were resolved at the first court date, often by “default judgement,” which occurs when the tenant does not appear in court, allowing the judge to rule in favor of the landlord without hearing from the tenant at all. These hearings can be over in less than a minute, Reidell said.
In Fredericksburg General District Court on September 22, there were 100 eviction filings, and about half resulted in judgements for the landlord. In 24 of these cases, the judge awarded attorney fees of between $160 and $300 and in a handful, there were no attorney fees awarded.
Twelve cases were awarded attorney fees that were greater than $300. Four were awarded fees of more than $800 and four of more than $1,000—which the VPLC report characterizes as “egregious.”
All 12 of these cases were decided in a single court hearing. A single attorney represented the landlords who were the plaintiffs in 11 of the cases.
Impact of Fees on Tenants
Excessive attorney fees do more than add to the tenant’s debt, the report states — “They can effectively rob some families of their legal right to remain in their homes.”
That’s because under Virginia law, tenants can get an eviction case dismissed if they can pay what they owe, including attorney fees, before the first court date. Even if they lose in court, they still have the right to remain in their home if they can pay the entire amount owed before the sheriff executes the final writ of eviction.
Tenants can also appeal an eviction judgement if they pay overdue rent, damages, and attorney fees within 10 days.
But “inflated attorney fees can push the amount needed to exercise this right out of reach for families already struggling to pay their back rent,” the report states. These legal rights — redemption and appeal — provide critical protections for tenants, but only to the extent they are financially accessible.”
The report recommends that General District Court judges in Virginia receive formal training on how to assess and award “reasonable” attorney fees. The 2024 District Court Judges Benchbook includes guidance on this issue for the first time ever, and further education would ensure consistency.
The report also encourages the General Assembly to enact legislation that codifies practices to ensure attorney fees are reviewed for reasonableness.
“Courts like that in Fairfax County already require parties requesting attorney fees to submit an attorney’s affidavit with relevant information for the judge to evaluate and assess a reasonable amount. This is a good starting point,” the report states.
Such relevant information should include specific tasks completed or anticipated; the number of hours spent on, or anticipated to be spent on, each task; and the hourly rate charged for each task.
Read the Advance’s previous reporting on local evictions here and here.
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Thanks for highlighting this form of poverty profiteering that helps destabilize society, contributing to juvenile delinquency and the deterioration of public health. The attorneys charging these disproportionate fees are not anonymous. One more reason to donate to our area's legal assistance nonprofit - Legal Aid Works.
Thank you for reporting on this.