Landlord Caught Overcharging Excessive Daily Fees? The Judge Demands Answers

[00:00:00]We were on a partial motion for summary disposition.

[00:00:04]Yes, Your Honor. If I may proceed.

[00:00:07]That issue before the court, Your Honor, is our motion for summary disposition, partial summary disposition as to some of these fees, and there's three sets of fees that we're disputing.

[00:00:20]There's been some confusion, and I apologize the ledger we we we didn't get a ledger until a full ledger until a couple days ago. So, um my forte is not math, Judge, so I'm going to do the best I can uh in trying to get this correct, cuz I have like three or four different ledgers, and I and then I got his, so I got a little confused. But, the easiest one first, Your Honor, is the court processing fee.

[00:00:49]I believe that's in his Mr. Ingram's response. He attached a letter.

[00:00:57]That's charged a $50 charge on February 23rd, 2026.

[00:01:03]Okay, wait, wait, wait. I slow down first of all.

[00:01:06]>> Sure.

[00:01:08]You mentioned an attached letter.

[00:01:12]Uh ledger. There's a ledger that's attached to his motion response, Your Honor.

[00:01:18]I don't think I don't think we got the attachments.

[00:01:21]I You're talking about plaintiff counter plaintiff counter counter defendant's response to defendant's counterclaims first amended counterclaims. That's what I have.

[00:01:31]No, that's from the general civil case.

[00:01:34]Um this is the landlord-tenant case, and I realize it's it's a lot. File. One second.

[00:01:43]We did email the court this week, Judge, a response to this particular LT matter and this motion along with an attachment that as counsel indicated uh is the most recent ledger up to date.

[00:02:00]All right, 1 1 second. I I got to reach out to my folks' office. No problem at all, Your Honor.

[00:02:07]Hold on, man.

[00:02:09]All right, thank you. I apologize for the delay there. I wanted to read and catch up on where we were with things.

[00:02:15]Um, all right. Um, I have reviewed that and now you may proceed.

[00:02:21]I was referring to the uh, ledger that the uh, Mr. Ingram had filed.

[00:02:27]And I was pointing out the three types of fees. The The simplest one to deal with first is the court processing fee on February 23rd, 2026.

[00:02:42]Um, Your Honor, this is not in the lease agreement anywhere. The The parties never agreed upon this.

[00:02:50]Um, I looked carefully in the lease agreement.

[00:02:54]And you know, this isn't allowed by law.

[00:02:57]It's a penalty.

[00:02:58]Um, and my client never agreed to it.

[00:03:03]And even if my client had agreed to it, Michigan law doesn't necessarily allow these types of charges, especially when in the summary proceeding statute, the court has the authority to award costs.

[00:03:18]And the court's familiar with this.

[00:03:19]Sometimes it's a It's referred to as the $75 statutory attorney fee. Um, sometimes there's a $150 fee for winning a motion. Sometimes there's a $300 fee for winning a trial. But I've never seen a court processing fee.

[00:03:35]Um, we would object to that fee.

[00:03:38]Um, the other two fees at issue Before we move on, I want to deal with them um, one at a time. So, let's start with that one. So, the court uh, attorney fees that is here it looks like.

[00:03:51]I mean Yeah, the court attorney fees, these are, I believe, charged for this case, Your Honor.

[00:03:59]Um and just so you know, Your Honor, you have some background.

[00:04:04]Uh my client would, at various times, get demands for payment emailed to him and sometimes they would have parts of a ledger.

[00:04:13]Um and since December I've been asking for a complete and full ledger.

[00:04:19]Uh when Mr. Ingram filed this case, he included a ledger up to, I believe, January 7th.

[00:04:28]Um and that was filed, I believe, with the court as well.

[00:04:35]But since then, I've been asking for ledgers and we finally got one 2 days ago.

[00:04:42]Um and this ledger supersedes any other ledger because they all kind of differ a little bit. Um but there were court attorney fees for the December case that they lost that was being charged and it looks like that's been removed. So, these attorney fees um I mean, I think it's arguable that they're recoverable, so I'm not going to dispute them.

[00:05:12]I would dispute only ones from a previous case in which they lost that case. It was a CARES Act motion that they lost on.

[00:05:22]May I respond? I I'm I'm Before you respond, I think I'm confused. Are you saying that they You just said you weren't going to dispute them, but but you're disputing them. I'm confused at what you're saying, counsel.

[00:05:36]When I drafted this motion, Your Honor, I was looking at ledgers that don't apply now. The old ones, right? So, are you not Are you Are you Are you disputing these ones or not disputing these?

[00:05:47]>> Not this set of attorney fees, no. Just the court processing fee, the $50 court processing fee. That's what I'm disputing. All right, thank you. All right, Mr. Ingram, you may proceed.

[00:06:00]Thank you, Judge. Um just speaking to the fee that he's referring to, typically, the way these cases are filed and the way the ledgers are generated, we always take out those and we do the statutory fees when we approach from the standpoint of a judgment. Um some of that stuff is just automatic, but that's neither here nor there. We haven't received a payment since October of 2025.

[00:06:30]The payments that we did receive, there was a few that trickled in before the new year, they all bounced.

[00:06:37]And counsel, I respect that he's taken issue with certain, you know, pieces here and there and he's probably going to want to go through each and every one, but his motion calls for the elimination of all the fees and frankly, that's not in accordance with case law or statute or really anything.

[00:06:56]I can understand caps, which many courts frequently do.

[00:07:01]They think think certain fees are cumulative at a certain point and that's fine. But liquidated damages and there are other arguments, these are arguments that are are real.

[00:07:12]And uh we're bleeding money. My client has not received a payment since October of 2025.

[00:07:21]And so, I mean, this is really just it's a small fish or small fry compared to the the massive rental debt that is currently owed by this particular defendant. So, at this point, >> I agree with you on that part, Mr. Ingram, but I think what he's saying is you're not entitled to put a $50 processing fee on his electric.

[00:07:45]I would not object to removing that from a judgement and I would even if he wouldn't have made that argument because that's something as I said that gets just automatically generated by their system and we never actually charged them that anyway.

[00:08:03]All right.

[00:08:05]Your next fee, Mr. Uh Yes. Yes, your honor.

[00:08:11]Um the next fee would be any NSF fees.

[00:08:16]Uh and these were the I believe the non-sufficient funds and I'm trying to find them here because hang on, I'm sorry. I'm So let So I want to understand that they're entitled to charge a non-sufficient fund fee. In fact, your client could be prosecuted for non-sufficient funds. That's a crime.

[00:08:32]He was prosecuted? I said he could be.

[00:08:35]Oh. Well, that's actually, your honor, that's not entirely accurate. There There is a statute on point here about NSF fees that they have to follow the statute.

[00:08:47]The statute says you have to lay out you have to put a specific letter together about uh about the non-sufficient funds.

[00:08:57]That's That's argument number one. Okay?

[00:09:00]There's a statute that >> the statute says you have to put a letter together for a non-sufficient fund?

[00:09:06]Yes.

[00:09:08]Yes.

[00:09:09]That is 100% accurate and if you If you want, I will get that statute for you if you just give me 1 second. I had it up and What does the lease say about this non-sufficient fund?

[00:09:20]You know, I'd have to go back and look, judge, but our argument is always if the other side comes forward and says, "Hey, our bank charges us fees whenever your client screw up and we have to pay those fees. That would be a good counter argument and a and a valid argument to make, but they never objected to these NFS NSF fees in their motion response at all.

[00:09:49]As to what the lease says, Judge, I'd have to pull that up and look at it. It may have been discussed in the lease.

[00:09:57]Um and I'd have to pull up, if you just give me one moment, Your Honor, I will get to that.

[00:10:04]Judge, my client isn't entitled to NSF fees.

[00:10:07]There've been multiple bounced checks.

[00:10:09]That's all the checks we received were bounced checks. I'm not I don't, frankly, completely follow what Attorney Campbell is arguing in terms of the Well, what he's talking about so from what I understand, he's talking about the the the the prosecution piece. In order to prosecute someone, you have to give them an I give someone a sentence.

[00:10:28]In order to prosecute someone, you have to give them a notice that there is an insufficiency and give them an opportunity. That is completely separate than the fact that they can collect Exactly.

[00:10:39]Thank you. Thank you. That's what I was going to say.

[00:10:42]I'm not I'm not I'm not buying that argument, Counselor. Mr. Campbell, I'm not buying that argument.

[00:10:48]Okay. I got it. In my argument all along, Judge, just so you know, is look, if you can show you've been damaged, fine. Show us the proof you've been damaged, and now we can say you have actually suffered damages. But if your bank hasn't charged you money, how did you get hurt? You need to explain it.

[00:11:06]And what I mean by that, Judge, is oh, well, our employee Mr. Campbell, I understand your argument. I don't agree with it. Okay?

[00:11:13]>> Okay. I just wanted to expand cuz I want to make sure the court has So, the other fee, Your Honor, are late fees. Okay? I have a big problem with these. These are in the lease.

[00:11:25]They the lease says it's a $100 fee charged on the 4th of the month and then $10 for every day thereafter. Now, they didn't always charge these late fees.

[00:11:35]Again, we just got this ledger a couple days ago, so I went through and I itemized out all out the all all the late fees out.

[00:11:44]The court processing fee was $50.

[00:11:48]I'll throw out the NSF fees cuz you're not you're not buying that argument for me. That's $150.

[00:11:53]So, if we move 200 I'm objecting to $1,040 in late fees um that I believe have been charged um and that appear on this document. And I do that for a couple reasons. I'm not saying he hasn't he wasn't late.

[00:12:11]What I'm saying is, you know, Michigan law allows you know, people to recover actual damages when they've been harmed. But you have to show concrete harm and that you've been injured. And often what happens is landlords will come into court and they'll say, "Your Honor, we have an employee who gets paid $25 an hour. They have to send two letters. It takes X amount of time to do that.

[00:12:33]That's why we charge these fees." Or, "Your Honor, if I had that money, the time value of money, if I put that into a commercial bank account, I would generate X amount of money. Therefore, I couldn't do that cuz they didn't pay their rent. Therefore, I have suffered a loss of X amount." Those are valid counter arguments.

[00:12:51]But those arguments haven't been made.

[00:12:53]And those arguments were not made by opposing counsel.

[00:12:57]And if they had come forth with those arguments and come forth with that evidence of how they were actually damaged, I wouldn't be able to make this argument today.

[00:13:05]But these are egregious and Michigan law would treat these as penalties.

[00:13:10]And you've got to prove your damages. The court knows this. In civil cases, you have to prove your your damages and I don't think they have.

[00:13:20]And that's why I'm objecting to this and this is I believe I said 12:40 was the amount plus the $50 court processing fee. So, we object to $1,290 worth of these fees, judge.

[00:13:33]Um and that's where we stand. And I'm happy to answer any questions the court has.

[00:13:40]Mr. Inger?

[00:13:42]Respectfully, um that's not the way damages work in a landlord-tenant context. I don't have to prove damage. The damages are self-evident. My client is allowing someone to stay in a space perhaps, you know, paying money to someone else if the place isn't owned, a mortgage, whatever the case may be.

[00:14:05]They are being harmed if they're not receiving payments while that person is living there rent-free.

[00:14:12]Late fees are allowed in virtually all the district courts in Michigan in landlord-tenant contexts. So, I'm not sure what attorney Campbell is saying, that there has to be some new standard where late fees are not allowed unless you can show damages beyond the damages that are self-evident. The fact that we're not getting the payment for what we're providing.

[00:14:40]My client is providing with the defendant with a space to live.

[00:14:45]And has since October of 2025 and earlier since they only took over in October of 2025, my client that is.

[00:14:54]And we're not being provided with anything.

[00:14:57]I If that's not harm, I don't know what is. It's certainly not, you know, what contractually my client agreed to. So, we stand by our fees. Um I know different courts will have different criteria in terms of deeming them excessive, but that's a completely separate issue than saying, you know, they need to be rejected whole cloth unless we show some sort of damages. I just don't think that's the way it works, and I don't find any of that persuasive.

[00:15:32]So, as I understand the law, Mr. Gamble, they cannot penalize the client for um the late and the fees have to be associated with their damages and have to be reasonable to those damages. The argument you're making is that in every case someone can say, "Show me how you come up with $100 as your fee." That is not the way the law works. Now, it has to be reasonable.

[00:15:59]And in this particular case, I believe $100 is reasonable. I do take issue, Mr. Ingram, with the fact that there's a $10 late fee every day.

[00:16:08]That is not acceptable. That is not That is excessive. Understood.

[00:16:13]>> I am not going to allow. But the $100 is pretty much standard. Yesterday I had one where someone was trying to charge $300. That is unacceptable as well. But $100 is a reasonable amount given everything that someone is paying for collection efforts to collect their money. In this case, $14,000 behind in rent is Other than these fees, what is in dispute? What is a What is the triable issue of fact here?

[00:16:46]I don't I don't understand what we're having a trial about.

[00:16:49]Right. These were the issues, Judge, that were triable. That's the issues.

[00:16:55]These are the issues.

[00:16:57]Right.

[00:16:58]So, I suppose we can go back and calculate how to take out the $50 fee and all those $10 fees, right?

[00:17:05]That's correct, Judge. And figure out where we are and reach some agreement.

[00:17:10]Yep. And I think we're very close to that, Your Honor. Um and Mr. Ingram and I have discussed that. And I'm pretty sure we can get a resolution here shortly.

[00:17:21]Um because my client did did uh uh file letter with the court. I didn't know he was going to do that, but he asked for additional time.

[00:17:30]Um he's apparently filing bankruptcy tomorrow. So, um but that's where we stand right now, Judge. Uh but Mr. Ingram and I have been talking and you know, we've been besides the ledger issue um cuz you know you know, back in again, back in February when this case first started, it wasn't 14,000.

[00:17:53]I mean, it was you know, you could say it's six, seven, or eight.

[00:17:58]Um getting coming up with four to five thousand is a lot different than coming the freedom if Hawk covers 3,000 is a lot different than coming up with you know, 13,000 or 10,000 dollars. Um but Mr. Ingram >> can what I need to say about that is whose fault is that? He could have he could have resolved this at any point in time.

[00:18:20]Judge, we can't Hawk will never pay and will never talk to you. SOS will never talk to you and never pay without a ledger. They require it. We've been asking for I can document back in December I asked, January I asked, February I asked, March I asked, April.

[00:18:38]I've been asking the entire time. I got one two days ago.

[00:18:42]I had partial ones.

[00:18:43]>> Why did it take so long to get the ledger?

[00:18:45]What's that? Well, ask Mr. Ingram why it took so long to get you the ledger.

[00:18:50]Ledgers were provided to Attorney Campbell.

[00:18:54]However, the ones that were generated didn't always show the entire rental history. It would be the most recent up until what's owed. And I believe that his issue was that he wanted one that showed the entire all the way back to 2025 rental balance. Um, if I understand correctly.

[00:19:24]I don't but I don't think frankly that that would have been necessary for assistance. It would not have been.

[00:19:32]It would not have been necessary for assistance.

[00:19:34]>> I've never heard that you had to have a complete rental history ledger to get assistance. So, I don't even frankly really understand what that's about, but That's that's my experience with SOS. I have interactions with them all the time. They're always wanting ledgers. Now, maybe it's SOS and not Hawk. I don't know. But, I'm telling you that >> He's not He's not saying that You So, you had a ledger. What he's saying is they didn't need the history to go back that far. I did not. You're all right. I think the court There's a mistake here.

[00:20:07]The ledger he gave me two days ago differs from past ledgers. We have ledgers that go into like January and from my memory there were late fees almost every day in January and they have been removed in this ledger. So, the ledgers I were getting before were not accurate. If they're saying this is the accurate ledger, the ledgers I got before and I could show you these judge. I'm going off of memory, but >> That doesn't change the contention that attorney Kemp was making though. If late fees might have been removed that we advise would be deemed excessive doesn't change the fact that he's arguing that he did not have a ledger and because there was no ledger he could not finish the assistance application. So, I I don't think these alleged alterations are relevant. You can say that that you didn't have a quote unquote ledger because something was shifted or this was removed or that, but you either have a ledger or you don't.

[00:21:07]It Judge, I just want to address one point.

[00:21:11]In October, Epic took over this lease.

[00:21:15]And before that, JMZ Management was managing it. My client moved in July 1st, and when I got the original ledger from Mr. Ingram in the first case back in December, I told him, I said, "You know, I don't understand this beginning balance of it says zero, but then it says uh my client made up like a partial payment of like $506.

[00:21:41]Yeah, it's um 10 4 It's on the first page, I believe, of your ledger. 10 14 2025 received at closing 567.37, and I believe that looks like they split up the month because they took over in the middle of the month. And I I thought to myself, "Wait a minute. Why would my client make half of a payment? This is weird.

[00:22:08]Where does this come from?" And I wanted to see if the $608 charged had anything to do with the previous management company. That's what I was trying to get at, Judge, because I didn't know. I didn't understand how This didn't make sense to me cuz my client never paid like such an odd amount. He might pay like $500, $300, but never I've never seen him pay a partial amount to this degree. It just didn't make sense. And that was one of the biggest issues we had.

[00:22:39]Judge, the balance was at zero. All of the ledgers were at zero that Attorney Campbell was given, and he's literally taking issue with the only payment that his client made in the entire rental history with my client that did not bounce.

[00:22:54]Somehow that's a mysterious or questionable payment, and so he's asking for records from before we were in charge of the place, which we've zeroed out.

[00:23:04]So, argument-wise, it doesn't even make sense to me, either. Essentially, he's saying this looks fishy because of the payment that's credited to my client, so I need to see old stuff that's unrelated that might somehow shed some sort of insight into something.

[00:23:21]I It doesn't even make any sense to me.

[00:23:24]It starts at zero. This client made one payment that didn't bounce.

[00:23:28]One. All the rest did.

[00:23:31]And there's some weird mystery around that, calling for more documentation.

[00:23:35]It's just dilatory, and it makes no sense.

[00:23:41]So, um with respect to this request here for an extension of time, what is what is bad about Your Honor, I believe my client can can speak on that.

[00:23:58]Mr. Edwards?

[00:24:04]Can you unmute yourself, Mr. Edwards?

[00:24:07]Let me see it. I'm sorry, Judge. He's in a class right now. Okay.

[00:24:10]>> Um That's okay. I understand.

[00:24:17]Um but anyway, Judge, I think he was um What happened, Your Honor, I just want to let the court know. I expected him to file last week, and he apparently he hired he's hiring Frigo and Associates, and the attorney went out of town and couldn't get the filing done. I expected this to be filed already, like last week.

[00:24:38]Um and so, you know, apparently the the attorney's not coming back till tomorrow, and the earliest they could file is tomorrow.

[00:24:46]So, he reached out to the court. I didn't ask him to do that, Judge. I I didn't know, but that's what he did, and he chose to do on his own accord.

[00:24:55]Um so, I you know, I don't mean to I don't want you to think I'm encouraging you ex parte communications cuz I'm not.

[00:25:03]Um, it's just Mr. Sorry, should actually go to it should go to Mr. Ingram so he can see it as well cuz I mean I have to >> Right.

[00:25:11]Right, and I'm sorry about that. So, um, I'll get that to him. Um, it's just about his bankruptcy.

[00:25:17]Uh, if you can just give me a minute, I'll get it to him.

[00:25:22]Judge, you indicated if we're going to sort the fee issue in the way that your honor you know, cut these up I would just at this point I would orally move for a judgment for the amount less those fees because as your honor said and as attorney Campbell even indicated, there is no triable issue left.

[00:25:45]This was the whole rub of what's been stringing this thing along.

[00:25:51]And it appears that it's been sorted.

[00:25:53]So, at this point I would ask for a judgment. If your honor is not inclined to do that, I understand, but it's just more time.

[00:26:01]It's just more more stringing along.

[00:26:05]More money that he'll owe, you know, >> [clears throat] >> it doesn't make any sense.

[00:26:10]>> do we have to resolve this motion and and we got to put forth an order to to make sure that these fees are wiped out, the ones that you have found uh, the court processing fee and the $10 per day fees. I believe is what you ruled upon, judge. And I'm happy to put that order together. Um, but you know, that has to be put into an order and it has to be entered. So, um, that's where we're at right now, judge.

[00:26:39]He's going to get his He's going to get his his what he wants here very shortly.

[00:26:44]And we were talking about a COD earlier in the breakout room. Um, so, Well, this is what I'm going to do. I'm not going to do what either one of you wants.

[00:26:56]Um what I'm going to do is I'm going to put it off for 1 week if we can do that.

[00:27:00]Then you guys put your order together.

[00:27:03]Make sure you have the correct numbers and we all agree on those numbers. And when I come back here, we come back here, I don't see a travel issue with that. Then at that point if you can't reach a COD or anything like that, that's what it will be. So hopefully you can reach out of some agreement before we have to come back here.

[00:27:21]I think that's a great That's an excellent resolution, Judge, and we will not object to that. All right.

[00:27:26]>> Thank you, Your Honor. One moment. Um what time on Give me 1 second, Your Honor.

[00:27:33]>> [clears throat] >> We could either Attorney Campbell, can you prepare that order for today with those numbers?

[00:27:45][clears throat] Yes, sir. Yes, I'll I'll I'll I'm going to try to get that done today before I leave and I'll email it to you and we can talk if there's anything cuz I'm not good at I mean I'm not I'm just being honest. My math is not so good.

[00:27:57]So don't We'll We'll work it out. I think if I understand the Judge >> p.m. Sorry, I have tried to say that future is secure.

[00:28:04]Oh, we'll talk.

[00:28:06]You said 2:30? 2:30 or 3:00 p.m. We'll do it at 2:30 next week same time.

[00:28:11]So May 20 May 28th, 2026 at 2:30 p.m. Is that Zoom as well, Judge, or is that in person? On Zoom.

[00:28:21]Thank you, Judge, and I apologize I interrupted the court the your your clerk there.

[00:28:26]>> It wasn't to the point that it really bothered me. You you you'll know if it does. Okay. [laughter] Okay. Thank you, Judge. I appreciate your patience. Take care.

[00:28:54]>> Mhm.