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Tenant's rights under OR landlord tenant law for landlord's excessive noise
Anonymous2 views1 answers
My landlord's are in the process of doing repairs. They've been working on the repairs for the past 4 weeks and should be finished in the next week to 2 weeks. They've been focusing on the storage area below my bedroom. I work nights and get to bed around 1 or 2 and for the past month I've been woken up at 7:30 with sawing, drilling and hammering noises that reverberate throughout my apartment.
I never received any kind of notice that this construction would be happening or for how long it would last. I finally called monday morning to see how long they projected the distrubance to continue. The next day I received an apology letter for the inconveince.
I wrote them a formal complaint and requested to be compensated for the disturbance with one month's rent. Since it's the landlord's obligatin to ensure that the tenant is given reasonable peace, comfort and privacy, I thought this would be reasonable. They denied my request.
Do I have any legal rights to pursue this matter? Is there any thing I can do to make a formal complaint with the state?
There is a common law duty imposed on landlords that comes to mind--the covenant of quiet enjoyment.
The covenant of quiet enjoyment is an implied covenant. It doesn't have to be written into your agreement with the landlord. The covenant of quiet enjoyment has to do with beneficial enjoyment of the premises. There is some good discussion about the covenant of quiet enjoyment in Reste Realty Corp. v. Cooper, 53 NJ 444, 251 A2d 268, 274, 33 ALR3d 1341 (1969). This is a case from outside of Oregon, so it does not directly apply. For Oregon, hop back to 1914 to get a good case on point. Wolf v. Eppenstein, 71 Or 1, 13-14, 140 P 751 (1914).
Your remedies for a breach of the covenant of quiet enjoyment take a little more to explain that you would find in a posting like this. You should contact a lawyer to discuss the statutory remedies available in Oregon. We are not talking about any big windfall here, but remedies such as moving out because you can't get any sleep. ORS Chapter 90 covers your statutory rights as a residential tenant. ORS 90.360 speaks to the "effect of landlord noncompliance with rental agreement or obligation to maintain premises."
From this posting, no attorney/client relationship has been formed. Treat this posting as a starting block for doing your own research on the topic. Better yet, hire an attorney to get a legal opinion, something you can't get from a web posting (and didn't get here).
