Storage fee...??!

We won a civil case against a previous landlord who withheld our deposit for her personal expenses. We left a few chairs and a weight bench in the storage building outside. The judge in the civil case awarded the landlord $100 hauling fee from the deposit for the items. She finally sent us our deposit but has also sent a bill for $250 for storage fee for the items. (These were only a few items, NOT like an apartment full of stuff.) We moved out in Feb and she's just now telling us about this charge. She never contacted us to pick up the items. What should be our next step? What a slumlord!

Sorry to hear about this mess. Your next step should be to send the former landlord a dispute letter by certified mail--return receipt requested. If the matter of this fee is not explicitly addressed in your order, I am sorry to say your next step thereafter will be going back to Court. You will need to seek a new order or a clarification of the existing one. I hope this matter gets resolved for you. AJJ

Storage fees pay to store the item until they are permitted to dispose of them. How long were these things left in storage? Why didn't you go back for them? If several months, $250 may be reasonable since the LL could not have allowed the new tenant use of that building until your things were removed. If only a few weeks, the fee is outrageous. Most states have laws that say a LL must store abandoned belongings for at least 30 days before disposing of them, so the fee for storage should be for at least that long. Check local storage places and see how much they would charge to have you sign a month long storage contract with them. (It will be higher than if you signed a long term contract.) Then use this written estimate as the basis to challenge the fee. And challenge that she failed to charge you for storage in her deposit statement and note it in the civil case that was heard earlier.

Unless you're not telling the full story, you basically abandoned your property. You left it where it didn't belong, where it had no right to be, for 5 months and basically left the landlord holding the bag. Be lucky that the LL even held on to it for this long. Sorry, but as a landlord, the fee seems reasonable for 5 months storage. The cheapest self storage until near me is $70 a month. Abandoned property is one of the biggest headaches for a LL because the laws are so ambiguous.