In a small county court trial, the trial lawyers at the Amaro Law Firm represented the tenant in a landlord-tenant dispute. The case against landlords John Beddow and Tina Beddow was tried a to verdict. The jury found in favor of our client and awarded him compensation for the landlord’s wrongful acts, including the landlord’s withholding of money from the tenant’s security deposit to which they were not entitled.

The landlords claimed that they relied upon the representation of their lawyer, Faisal Shah. Mr. Shah testified that he never physically saw the damages and that he did not itemize all of the damages the landlords claimed in his alleged accounting of the deposit, as required by the Texas Property Code.

The jury examined evidence that included photographs of the residence’s poor condition before it was rented, testimony on how the landlords regularly kept other tenants’ deposits, and documents showing the landlords’ lack of response to basic tenant maintenance requests.

The landlords even paid their property manager, James D. Owens of the Houston Heights, Texas, $1,000.00 to testify for them. They also paid another witness to testify that some drapes suffered “heat damages.” On cross examination, Mr. Owens offered unsupportable and impeachable testimony based on his supposed experience as a property manager. Mr. Owens testified about the expensive charges he believed to be reasonable for patching “nail holes” and removing a “satellite dish”, even though he said the property was left in good and clean condition after the walk-through at the end of the lease.

The court entered a judgment on the verdict which also included pre-judgment interest and court costs. The Beddows retaliated against our client for standing up for his rights by filing a counter-suit. Their counter-suit requested over $50,000.00 in attorneys’ fees and a few hundred dollars in “extra” damages over the security deposit.

The jury disagreed with the Beddows and found that our client did not breach the lease agreement. The jury awarded the landlords zero dollars. The Beddows’ lawyer, James Bradley, also represented them in three other lawsuits they filed arising from another real estate deal. Mr. Bradley filed a motion for new trial and a motion to disregard the jury’s findings against his clients. Despite Mr. Bradley’s apparent efforts to save face with his clients in a losing cause, the Court denied their motions after oral argument, after which the Beddows quickly settled for nearly the entire judgment amount. In an ironic twist, the amount of the judgment was higher than the two offers our client made to settle his case before the verdict was rendered.