A Baltimore judge last month eviscerated a property owner and management company for charging a renter excessive, repeated and unexplainable fees — and demanded they award him more than a quarter million dollars in damages to mitigate his emotional distress.

In a fiery 40-page opinion, Baltimore Circuit Court Associate Judge Catherine Chen wrote that the case demonstrated a clear power imbalance between the plaintiff, Rodney Deaver, a lifelong Baltimore resident, and his opponents.

The award, she said, appropriately addresses the “David versus Goliath, Baltimore versus everybody fray,” and validates the real challenges everyday tenants face in keeping their homes.

Sometimes referred to as “junk fees,” these hidden, often vague charges have come under fire over the last few years as consumers wrestle with inflation. Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump have attempted to crack down on what they have called unfair pricing, especially within the entertainment and short-term lodging industries, where “processing” “service” and “convenience” fees have helped disguise the true cost of some goods and experiences.

Ariel Nelson, senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, said taken together such fees play a role in the dual national affordability and instability crises.

“The jury understood that,” Nelson said about Deaver’s case. “There was acknowledgement by the jury about how serious it got.”

The Baltimore tenant’s case included charges such as pet rent that inflated his monthly bill — and complaining about one fee tended to lead to another showing up right behind it.

The ruling came against the building owner, Patapsco Owner L.P. and its affiliates, as well as the property manager, Rushmore Management LLC, under the Maryland Consumer Debt Collection Act and the Maryland Consumer Protection Act.

In an email, Kimberly Manuelides, an attorney for the owner and property manager, said they were “disappointed” by the jury verdict and the judge’s ruling against their motion for a new trial or reduced award.

“Insofar as this continues to be an ongoing litigation matter,” Manuelides said, “we have no further comment at this time.”

Such cases are relatively uncommon and legally novel, the judge noted in her opinion. Nelson said each state tends to handle junk fees differently, giving each an opportunity to set their own “ceiling.”

Under Maryland law, consumers can sue entities that “claim, attempt, or threaten to enforce” a right to payment “with knowledge that the right does not exist.” Those entities are liable if they misrepresent “the character, amount, or legal status of any debt” or use “false representation or deceptive means to collect.”

Deaver, a retired former postal service worker and airport staffer who served in the U.S. Air Force, lived at a Brooklyn apartment complex in South Baltimore starting in 2018. About 2022, he began noticing strange charges showing up on his account and couldn’t get management to correct them.

For example, court filings show, management charged Deaver $14 for a supplemental renter’s insurance fee despite him having his own policy. Then, they charged him $300 when he temporarily took in his niece and her cat, at first telling him it was a refundable deposit and later refusing to pay it back. He had to pay $40 a month in pet rent for the length of the cat’s stay, but continued to see the fee show up on his bill even after his niece moved out.

Deaver also faced multiple late fees and unexplained balances, despite paying his rent on time every month. When he asked for clarity, he said he was often told they’d “take care of it.” But the charges remained.

In all, Deaver faced at least seven improper charges for renter’s insurance; seven erroneous monthly pet rent charges; and six false late-fee charges, according to Chen’s opinion. Deaver testified that the situation caused him to lose sleep, carry undue stress and make him anxious about coming home after work for fear of finding an eviction notice on his door.

In February 2024, the company alleged that Deaver failed to pay rent altogether, and filed to evict him for an $880.43 balance, which included an erroneous late fee. It took him two court visits, and two separate days off work, for them to dismiss the filing.

“What gets me is they had so many chances to straighten this out, but they didn’t,” Deaver said in an interview this past fall, after the verdict. He said he felt he was being “bulldozed” and would have been forced to pay extra had he not contested the charges.

In court, the defendants acknowledged they had made mistakes and owed Deaver some money — but argued that they did not use deception or illegal practices. During trial, the owner and manager blamed the errors on “an unfortunate breakdown in internal communication and a delay in correcting ... internal management systems.”

They also questioned how much emotional distress Deaver endured, at one point saying there was no “medical documentation” to support such a diagnosis and no immediate effort by Deaver to move out. Deaver was never in danger of being evicted, the defendants said, despite initiating the eviction process against him in February 2024.

Chen called that defense “mind boggling.”

Deaver’s attorneys asserted that Deaver could have lost his home had he ignored the eviction filing.

They obtained an email from a property manager in March 2024 who said she had failed to straighten out Deaver’s paperwork due to being overwhelmed with “having so many residents coming in one after another about the same issues.” Even after that email, they noted, Deaver continued to face improper charges.

During testimony, Deaver asked why he needed a doctor’s note to prove his emotional distress.

“If somebody is robbing you every day,” he said, “what kind of emotion would you have? I don’t think you need a doctor to understand how upsetting this is.”

In her opinion, Chen said the defendants seemed eager to “blame” Deaver for continuing to rent his apartment. She noted that Deaver effectively explained “the nuances of a working person’s life” to those “who appeared to have no understanding of those nuances.”

The Federal Trade Commission offered some guidance on junk fees in late 2024, but did not specifically include residential housing. Instead, the NCLC has encouraged state and local governments to take legislative action, and it singled out Montgomery County in particular for limiting tenants’ bills to a list of “regulated” fees and requiring households to opt in for “unregulated optional services.”

Junk fees, the NCLC has said, have been disproportionately levied against people of color, who are more likely than white people to rent. In a September 2024 report, the organization noted that in the absence of strong federal regulation, concerned advocates and lawmakers have attempted to crack down on extraneous housing bills with “enforcement of existing and new laws and private litigation.”

The jury award — roughly 800 times what owners and managers acknowledged they owed — was justified for the “humiliation,” “inconvenience” and “disregard and dismissiveness” levied by the companies, Chen wrote.

The judge noted that the defendant, which oversees some 14,000 tenants, could make millions of dollars per year on improper fees alone.

Patapsco L.P. and Rushmore Management have yet to file an appeal.