Need recommendation for solicitor who can sue landlord for harassment

[RobertL2017]

Hello everyone

I have just discovered this website and I hope someone here might be able to help me, as I feel I have been going round in circles for months.

I am the tenant of a housing association, and I believe the way it has been treating me for the last two years might constitute harassment. Until now I have been able to do nothing about it, as this is an area that is not funded by Legal Aid, but now, courtesy of a relative, I have access to sufficient funds to sue my HA privately.

The big problem, however, has been finding a solicitor in the West Midlands who specialises in this field. There is a list on the Law Society's website but the fields are far too broad to be of any use. I actually went to Shelter in Birmingham, and spoke to a solicitor there, but when I asked her to recommend a solicitor who could sue for harassment, she told me that she was not allowed to do so.

I contacted a practice that does nothing but housing law (Community Law Partnership, Birmingham), but I was told they couldn't help me because they only did legally-aided work.

Several times, I've found solicitors on the Internet who looked as if they could help, and then emailed them, but they've never even returned my message.

I know that sooner or later, I'd probably find someone who would represent me, but the thing is, solicitors vary so much in quality, and there are so many 'horror stories' about solicitors on the Web, I'm frightened that I'd just be throwing my money away if I just took pot luck and chose a solicitor without advice.

So, can anyone here recommend a practice that deals with landlord harassment and is reliable? Any advice would be very gratefully received, because the way my HA has been treating me has had a serious impact on my health, and I feel I have to consider civil action, if only to protect myself.

[paulajayne]

Re: Need recommendation for solicitor who can sue landlord for harassment

If you give us details as to what has occurred then members here can better advise you.

With a chance of saving you money on legal fees.

[RobertL2017]

Solicitor in West Midlands for landlord harassment?

Hello


Yesterday I posted a query about finding a solicitor in the West Midlands who could sue my landlord for harassment, and 'paulajayne' replied asking me to give a few details of what this was all about.


I've just tried clicking the 'reply' button on the original thread but I just get asked to log in then when I do log in, it asks me again, and so on. It seems the only thing I can do is start a new thread, so here goes.


The original thread is here:


http://legalbeagles.info/forums/show...for-harassment


Now I'll supply a few details of what my landlord, a housing association, has been doing. It's a very long story so I'll have to precis it as much as I can.


I'm a 64 year old man who suffers from serious clinical depression and anxiety, and also has very serious chronic asthma. I live in a complex of flats, and because my asthma is so bad through the night, I have to sleep in my living room, as it has windows in two walls, and I really need the air circulation it gives. I have to keep my windows open every night, Winter and Summer.


In 2013 another tenant allowed her son to move into her flat and then she went to live elsewhere - totally against the rules, because he wasn't the tenant, and also because he was in his 30s and the complex is for over-55s. This didn't bother me, but then he statred smoking under my window several times each night in the early hours - any time between midnight and 7am, and up to 5 or 6 times a night. Cigarette smoke is a strong trigger for my asthma, and I have had attacks through the night that were nearly fatal, so I was very, very worried.


This man only needed to walk around the corner to smoke - a distance of about ten yards - to solve this problem, but whenever I pleaded with him to do this, his answer was that he 'could smoke wherever he ****ingwell liked'.


I complained to my HA, but they just kept saying that all they could do was ask him to smoke elsewhere, and if he refused, they could do no more. This was absurd, because not only was this man breaching the nuisance clause in the tenancy agreement by causing me asthma attacks by refusing to smoke just a few yards away, but he wasn't even supposed to be living there in the first place.


I sent my HA a letter from my GP confirming that I had serious asthma that was triggered by cigarette smoke, but it made no difference. And whenever I wrote to my HA pleading with them to do something, all I ever got back was 'this matter has already been addressed'. I persisted with my efforts to get something done about this, and finally, I got a letter telling me I had been classed as a 'vexatious complainant'. This devastated me - all my life I have striven to be a decent, law-abiding citizen, and I honestly cannot ever remember behaving in a way that could remotely be termed 'vexatious'.


By this time, this man's mother, and the woman who lives below me, who became her close friend, began displaying a lot of animosity towards me because of my complaints, and when the man was finally made to leave, 16 months after he had arrived, I was seen as the cause, and these two women began making very serious malicious allegations about me.


By this time, I had done the thing that I firmly believe was the cause of all the harassment I have experienced from my HA: I tried to sue it for negligence, as a Litigant in Person. My reasoning was that the HA knew that this smoking was threatening my health and might even be threatening my life (I live alone, far from the nearest hospital, so an attack really could have been fatal). It had the means to rectify the situation by telling this man to smoke elsewhere, not merely asking him, because he was not even supposed to be living there. So I thought that by allowing my health to be put at serious risk, when it had the means to prevent it, the HA was being negligent. But the law does not work that way, I discovered, and the case was struck out.


It was then that the harassment began. The HA kept writing to me to say that I was breaching my tenancy, and that it was considering evicting me. I repeatedly wrote to them asking them to give me just one piece of evidence that I had breached my tenancy, and to tell me what grounds they had for threatening to make me homeless, but they failed to do either.


I told them that their threats, and their refusal to substantiate them, was causing me to think very seriously of ending my life. This caused them to send a Statement Of Concern to my GP, and when I got to read it, I found they had lied: they had claimed that it was 'issues with neighbours' that was causing these suicidal thoughts, when I had told them very clearly it was their threats to take my home from me.


Then after 10 months of me asking what evidence they had of breach of tenancy, and my HA refusing to answer, I came home one afternoon in October 2015 to find a large envelope sticking out of my letterbox. I sensed that this might be bad news, so I opened it before I even opened my front door, and read it in the corridor. It was a Notice of Seeking Possession, threatening to apply to have me evicted if I did not vacate my home withing two weeks. I was terrified.


When I looked at the allegations of breach of tenancy they were making, most were noise complaints from my downstairs neighbour. This was in spite of the fact that (I learned later) housing officers had visited the people in the flat next door, whose bedroom adjoins my living room, and they said I was so quiet, they seldom even knew I was in. It was also in spite of the fact that twice this woman had made noise complaints, and I had proved to the HA that I was in a flat at the other end of the complex. It was also in spite of the fact that for the first two and a half years of living below me, this woman had never complained, then suddenly began complaining a few days after I had made a complaint about her. I other words, it seems highly likely that the HA suspected that these noise complaints were retaliation because that man was made to leave the complex, but used them anyway.


I repeatedly tried to get the HA to enter into a dialogue about these allegations, protesting that they were all groundless, but it would not answer my letters.


The day they wanted me to leave my home came and went, and nothing happened. I let a month go by and wrote to the HA asking them if they were going to apply to the Court to have me evicted - they said they were, but that they were 'gathering more evidence'. That was 18 months ago, and the HA still has not applied to have me evicted. All this makes me think that they knew they had no grounds for doing this, but thought that if they frightened me enough, I would go of my own accord.


Then in April of the next year, it applied for an ASB injunction against me. I cannot begin to describe how much that hurt me, and still hurts me, because I was brought up to pride myself on being a respectable person. I honestly cannot think of anything I have ever done in my 64 years that could be described as antisocial behaviour, so I feel I have been shamed - I have had my good name stolen from me.


The 'evidence' was in the form of a witness statement from a housing officer plus one each from those two women. The statements from the women were just lies from start to finish, and one allegation just devastated me: the woman whose son had caused that trouble with his smoking actually said that she was so afraid of what I might do to her, she carried an attack alarm everywhere she went. I am the most harmless person you could wish to meet - to read that about me hurt me more than I could possibly say. I think there is a lot of evidence that the HA knew these women were probably lying, but used their testimony anyway, because it wanted me out of its property by any means possible and it knew an ASB injunction would be a step towards this.


Three tenants offered to be my witnesses and made out witness statements. Two were women, and immediately began to be intimidated by friends of those two women appearing for the HA. One even found herself being harangued in front of several tenants and having her own witness statement quoted back at her, and called a liar. All three of us, plus my solicitor, complained to the HA, but no effort was made to stop the intimidation.


On the morning of the hearing, my barrister told me that, basically, if these two women gave their testimony in my defence, their lives would not be worth living, and she was probably right. It would have been wrong of me to let them testify, and my third witness was too ill to come to Court that day. With no witnesses to speak up for me, and a woman who was prepared to claim I was so frightening that she needed an attack alarm testifying against me, I was afraid my HA might get that injunction, even though I had done nothing wrong, so when my barrister suggested I offer an Undertaking to the Court, giving the HA what it wanted, I reluctantly agreed.


However, I insisted that it include a clause saying that in signing it, I was not admitting to the truth of any of my HA's claims.


Ever since then, the HA has used this Undertaking to threaten me whenever I do anything it dislikes. For instance, earlier this year I learned that a close friend of one of those two women had approached someone who was just preparing to move into the complex, and warned him about me. He had actually said to this man that I had driven a former tenant to her death. Naturally, I was appalled when I learned this, and wrote to my HA. I said that I could not hope to have a normal life there if a tenant was poisoning the minds of people against me before they had even moved in, so could they please tell this man not to spread such vile rumours? The HA did not reply. Then one day, when I saw him in one of the shared areas, I challenged him about it, and calmly told him that if he did not stop spreading harmful rumours like this, I would go to the police. A few days later, I got a letter from my HA claiming that my telling him this constituted 'nuisance', was a breach of the Undertaking, and threatened to have the ASB injunction application reinstated.


There's a lot more I could say, but this post is already long enough. Obviously, you only have my word for any of this, and I would not be presumptuous enough to expect you to automatically believe it. I am just giving it for background.


There are two main reasons I want to sue for harassment. The first is because I feel I have had my good name taken from me - it's almost as if I've been branded a thug - and if I can get all the evidence tested in Court, and it is found to be invalid, I might be vindicated. The other main reason is to protect my home. My mental illness means that my home is everything to my, and I could not go on if I lost it, yet my HA is eager to pounce on any malicious claim that might be made against me, so again, I need to have these allegations tested in Court and shown up for the rubbish they are


Which brings me to finding a solicitor who can sue my HA for what I imagine (not being a lawyer) would be breach of the Protection From Harassment Act 1997. Thanks to a generous relative I have access to more than enough funds to bring this to trial, but choosing a solicitor at random could be a disaster, and I don't want to throw this person's money down the drain.


I've found just going to solicitors' offices really frustrating, because I find that you usually get to see a 'paralegal' first, who can't tell you whether their practice can act for you, then they tell you that you can get half an hour with a solicitor for £X but that they STILL might not be able to tell you if they can help you after the half hour's over.


I have painstakingly amassed all the evidence I believe I have, and set it out carefully in one document. All I want is a solicitor who guarantees that s/he definitely does specialise in this field, then to be able to buy one or perhaps two hours of that solicitor's time - I know it will cost £500 or more but that's fine , get them to read all the evidence then tell me if I have a viable case or not, and if I do, then go on to represent me.


So can anyone please recommend someone? I want to get the ball rolling as soon as possible.


Any advice would be very gratefully received, because this whole business has caused me far more distress than I can possibly describe.


One last thing. I said that I could not post to my original thread, because I kept being asked to log in over and over again. If anyone is kind enough to reply to this thread, I want to be able to have a dialogue with them, so can anyone tell me why I was shut out of my first thread, and how I can put this right? I post from an Android tablet, if that helps people diagnose what's going wrong.

[Kati]

Re: Need recommendation for solicitor who can sue landlord for harassment

Hi @RobertL2017 ... I've merged your two threads (and I'll tag @Amethyst to see if there's any issue with commenting/posting at the minute )

I'll also tag @paulajayne and @Crazy council for you (for advice/assistance) xx