Excessive Fines by the city?
What is the name of your state? MA
A friend agreed to take over someone else's mortgage as a favor due to her lower interest rate. (big mistake)
The people actually living in the home built a porch and several additions to the basement without obtaining proper city permits, unknown to my friend (the mortgage holder). My friend gets a court summons 8 months later and is getting sued by the city to obtain permits and bring construction work to code. Previous to her getting served papers the city was actually dealing with the tenants (whom the city initially thought were the owners) to comply. The tenants failed to do anything and that is how she was the one that ended up getting served with papers, and at that point it was too late to not go to court, although she did try to negotiate with the plaintiffs lawyer promptly upon getting this court summons.
In this letter the city requests $300/day in fines until completion of work. It took her about 5 months and 5 court appearances to finally correct all the work and get the various permits that were needed.
Now that the work is up to code, the judge is deliberating the case and will mail his judgement out to the parties. Can she really expect to be fined by the judge $300/Day?? That would total to about $50K! And she couldn't even afford a lawyer and answered all the court paperwork herself. What is the normal judgement in cases like this? Do judges normally reduce the fines to something "reasonable"? She could never pay this 50K. All work is now completed and passed inspection, and i find it difficult to beleive that someone could be fined such an outrageous amount.
In your opinion is it very unlikely she would be served with an astronomical fine upwards of 10K or more (aside from court costs)?
What ball park figure can court costs generally come to?
Thanks to anyone that may shed some light on this.
What is the name of your state? MA
A friend agreed to take over someone else's mortgage as a favor due to her lower interest rate. (big mistake)
The people actually living in the home built a porch and several additions to the basement without obtaining proper city permits, unknown to my friend (the mortgage holder). My friend gets a court summons 8 months later and is getting sued by the city to obtain permits and bring construction work to code. Previous to her getting served papers the city was actually dealing with the tenants (whom the city initially thought were the owners) to comply. The tenants failed to do anything and that is how she was the one that ended up getting served with papers, and at that point it was too late to not go to court, although she did try to negotiate with the plaintiffs lawyer promptly upon getting this court summons.
In this letter the city requests $300/day in fines until completion of work. It took her about 5 months and 5 court appearances to finally correct all the work and get the various permits that were needed.
Now that the work is up to code, the judge is deliberating the case and will mail his judgement out to the parties. Can she really expect to be fined by the judge $300/Day?? That would total to about $50K! And she couldn't even afford a lawyer and answered all the court paperwork herself. What is the normal judgement in cases like this? Do judges normally reduce the fines to something "reasonable"? She could never pay this 50K. All work is now completed and passed inspection, and i find it difficult to beleive that someone could be fined such an outrageous amount.
In your opinion is it very unlikely she would be served with an astronomical fine upwards of 10K or more (aside from court costs)?
What ball park figure can court costs generally come to?
Thanks to anyone that may shed some light on this.
