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Thanks for sharing this, that sounds like an obviously frustrating outcome. Knowing very little about rental disputes, I also thought about the "meeting-of-the-minds" problem Syo brought up being an issue. I guess the strongest argument against your mom is that she must've known it was a mistake since the garage was part of an enticement deal. I'd be interested to know how arbitration outcomes compare to real courts for this issue, judges there aren't particularly known to be deferential to tenants.
She did know it was a mistake, but thought they'd be forced to eat their own mistake cuz it was in the contract. I can't remember the exact details but I thought they tried to make her sign a revised contract with the paid garage option. She refused to sign it cuz she saw no benefit in doing so, and thought that them trying to get her to sign it meant they'd have to abide by the contract they actually gave her.
Sorry to say, but it's not clear your mom was in the clear. What you're describing is a classic palpable unilateral mistake, where the remedy a traditional court would likely impose is either modifying the contract to make it "make sense", or canceling it completely. In general, contract law does not treat kindly people who think they've potentially hoodwinked the other party. It's not obvious to me that this result was caused by arbitration.
Fair enough, but its not like a lay person knows that. And its not like lay people don't get exploited by this kind of bullshit all the time.
She had told them she didn't want to pay for the garage when the lease came up for renewal. They added it to the contract for free for the second year. Had it been appropriately written with her paying for the garage she wouldn't have signed that lease.
There was confusion for her about that contract, did they give the garage to her for free cuz she said she wouldn't pay for it, or did they screw up in giving her the free garage? Once they came back and said "you need to pay for this" her response was "I don't want to pay for it, I'd rather not have the garage, but its in the contract I signed". They then try to get her to sign a different contract, she doesn't. Then they go silent for 8 months and bring it to arbitration.
It wasn't like she was trying to hoodwink them. There was a garage she barely used and didn't want to pay for, she had a job working 80 hours a week, and wasn't going to spend the time to get up to spend on contract and leasing law. Going back in time she would have adamantly told them to take it off her lease.
In my mind they might have realized they were in the right at month 4 and allowed her to rack up the additional 8 months of payments cuz they knew they'd win in arbitration/court at the end of it.
Another story about apartments. I was moving out of an apartment. I emailed our landlord in May to say that we were moving out by August. Landlord doesn't respond. I respond to the email in June, "hey do you need anything from us? We are moving out by August." No response until a few days from the end of June "we need two months notice of your official move out date". I'm like yeah, that is why I sent you the email in May. They say "you didn't give us an official move out date. Without an official move out date you didn't give us notice." Grr me: "[whatever the last day of July] is our official move out date". Them "Ok that is only a month away, you still owe us rent for all of August".
I asked some for some legal advice on reddit and the two people that said they had dealt in rental law said I was basically guaranteed to lose. I took their advice and just paid for that month. But seriously, fuck them. They could have told me that I didn't say the exactly correct magic words to fulfill a contract. Instead they just went silent and let me rack up another month of rent. I felt a little better after I blasted them on google reviews for their shitty email communication.
In general I just don't think you realize how damn frustrating the legal system and arbitration systems are for anyone not officially a part of it. From the outside it just looks like a thinly veiled system for saying "fuck you, you lose! Now pay us money!" I have zero faith in the fundamental fairness of the legal system, or most arbitration systems. If paypal or some bank stole a bunch of money I had stored with them, I wouldn't expect to get it back via a court or arbitration system. I'd go to the most popular friends I have and try to take the issue to the court of public opinion, and hope that somewhere there had "this one weird trick" that might work to get my money back, or hope that it blows up and they are forced to give my money back due to public pressure. That is coming from someone who loathes Twitter mobs. Yet somehow they appear to offer a much better chance of justice.
This whole topics has gotten me very worked up. And I consider myself and my mother well educated people that are generally very capable of navigating the bureaucratic world we often live in. I can't imagine how shit the system is for people who don't have the same level of bureaucratic navigation skills we have.
This is a completely fair point but I don't think I articulated myself in the best way here. I am not even trying to defend the legal system here. You're completely right that a lay person would have no reason to know about things like "palpable unilateral mistake" contract law. I personally think what happened to your mom was unfair, so when I'm citing the legal standard on these disputes that shouldn't be taken as an endorsement.
The issue here isn't whether the legal system is fair, it's not! This is especially so when you take into account pervasive power imbalances. Anyone with clout, power, money, intelligence, sophistication, etc will be able to clobber anyone who doesn't have those to defend themselves. So when I bring up arbitration, it's not in isolation, it's relative. Is arbitration dispute resolution fair on its own? No! Is arbitration "fairer" than traditional courts? I don't know, maybe, maybe not!
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