Fifth Avenue Forum

Passed by Congress after the Civil War, § 1983 says you can sue government officials when they violate your rights. The Supreme Court, however, has said that government officials can raise a defense called "qualified immunity" to those suits, and that defense means that in many cases government officials (like police officers) are not held liable even when they engage in egregious civil-rights violations. This article says that the actual text of the statute that Congress passed said that government officials cannot raise defenses like qualified immunity. The phrase of the statute that prohibits defenses was omitted when the statute passed by Congress was compiled into a law book in 1874, and that omission has carried over into all subsequent compilations of the federal statutes.

If the article is correct, then without that scrivener's error, it is quite likely that the Supreme Court would never have held that government officials can raise a defense of qualified immunity, and that would mean that literally tens of thousands of people over decades of time who all had their civil-rights lawsuits against government officials dismissed on the basis of qualified immunity should have won all of those suits.

Red, white, yellow, sweet, green, shallots, or leeks?

4.3 trillion daily viewers. And I remember reading the print edition in college.

Reminded me of one of my favorite comedy sketches

alright, I have a situation. In September of last year, I signed a lease for an apartment. Before I did, I asked twice what their break lease fee was, and I was told it was just 60 days notice (so effectively 2 months’ rent)

I am now officially under contract for a house and brought up that I would like to break the lease. I am now told it’s not just 60 days notice, but also 2x month rent as well (so ultimately it’s 4x rent which is ridiculous compared to the other apartment complexes I researched). I admit I should’ve gotten the information back in September in writing, but oh well.


I did some very quick research and I found something:

If you don’t have a legal justification to break your lease, the good news is that you may still be off the hook for paying all the rent due for the remaining lease term. This is because under North Carolina law (Isbey v. Crews, 284 S.E.2d 534 (N.C. Ct. App. 1981)), your landlord must make reasonable efforts to re-rent your unit—no matter what your reason for leaving—rather than charge you for the total remaining rent due under the lease. So you may not have to pay much, if any additional rent, if you break your lease. You need pay only the amount of rent the landlord loses because you moved out early. This is because North Carolina requires landlords to take reasonable steps to keep their losses to a minimum—or to “mitigate damages” in legal terms.
So, if you break your lease and move out without legal justification, your landlord usually can’t just sit back and wait until the end of the lease, and then sue you for the total amount of lost rent. Your landlord must try to rerent the property reasonably quickly.

here’s the case:
https://casetext.com/case/isbey-v-crews


Is this even worth considering for me? it’s an apartment complex in a popular area of Charlotte and I know they would have no issue finding another renter, particularly within a four month timeframe. But also I feel like they’d do everything to **** me over

Your break lease fee is different than that example of charging rent through the rest of the lease term

You're paying a fee. Some places charge a fee and then also rent through the remainder of the lease if it isn't leased out again.

Your break lease fee is different than that example of charging rent through the rest of the lease term

what I’m proposing is I give 60 days notice and just peace out without breaking the lease

also they never included the break lease addendum in the lease itself when I signed it so I never agreed to it technically anyway

Does the lease say anything about early termination?

Are you saying you pay a fee for just straight up not renewing?

Does the lease say anything about early termination?

this is all I could find for it

interestingly they mention their responsibility to relet…

Generally speaking. My father in law is likely leaving his house and a his mother's house to my wife. She's an only child. I'd like to tell him let's figure this out ASAP. Is a trust the best option?

Trust is going to be the way to go. Mainly because the trust will get a stepped up tax basis. Meaning that when the last person of the trust dies, the value of the house becomes the value on date of death. So if the house is sold say within a year or two, probably will have minimum capital gains on the sale. You avoid probate as well, but that's not the big advantage here.

*Not an estate attorney nor an estate expert

My mom was an only child and my grandparents actually put the house in my parents' names before they died. While that made it simple in the end, the capital gains tax is much greater.

Cool. Yeah wasn't expecting a full blown analysis, just point me down the right road to research and save time.

He is almost 70 and doesn't really take care of himself health wise. So I wanted to approach him about it and see what he says

International resort (Costa Rica) dropped our reservation within 50 days of our trip. Totally bricks a 10-day international vacation (potentially)...can I take any kind of legal action, regardless of T's & C's...? I mean, anyone can sue anyone, basically, but any decent precedent...? Consumer protection seems to be on the rise, but maybe not in a country that bases its economy on coconut sales...