OTLA Trial Lawyer Summer 2021

38 Trial Lawyer • Summer 2021 By Troy Pickard B onnie Thorson would make it to 77-years-old without suffering a serious injury. And it wasn’t for lack of an exciting life. She had climbed moun- tains in the French Alps. She was mugged once, outside a casino in Atlantic City. As a child, she had survived a train wreck unscathed, even though people sitting near her had died. In the end, though, the 77-year streak wasn’t derailed by a high-speed collision. It wasn’t a violent criminal that would change her life. It wasn’t the awesome forces of mother nature. Thorson’s bones would be broken by a neglectful landlord. By her late 70s, Thorsen was well into retirement after a career spent as an ad- ministrator for a small dental office. She had never married or had children. Her only family nearby was her 99-year-old mother, who lived at a care facility. Thorsen’s mother didn’t get around very well, so Thorsen moved into an apart- ment in a 6-unit complex near her mother’s home just outside the city limits southwest of Portland. The apart- ment was far from upscale, but it was important toThorsen to live close to her mother, whom she visted almost every day. Plus, it was close to some public outdoor tennis courts. And although Thorsen couldn’t afford a pricey club membership, she had played since she was a girl. The public courts allowed her to keep up an activity she felt had kept her relatively young and healthy. When Thorsen had originally toured this one-bedroom apartment, she was unimpressed with the carpet, which was stained and worn. In one transition area, the carpet was slightly loose and rippled between rooms. The manager, a man who worked off site but who met Thorsen at the sixplex, explained the carpet was almost 10 years old, and as- sured Thorsen the owner planned to replace the apartment’s carpeting before she even got her keys. Satisfied with that plan, Thorsen signed a lease to move in a few weeks later. Thorsen was on a fixed income, and didn’t feel she could afford to pay rent at two places at once, so she had taken the risky step of arranging to move into the new apartment on the last day of her lease at her previous home, a Saturday. She had everything well-organized. She packed up almost everything a few days before. Her moving crew showed up mid-morning and loaded everything into one large truck. Thorsen left her keys in her old landlord’s dropbox, and then drove to her new manager’s house and picked up her new key from the man- ager’s teenage daughter (the manager wasn’t around). She met her moving crew at the new home. Thorsen opened the door, and something seemed off to her. But the interior of the apartment was dark, and it was hard to gather much detail. She stepped to the blinds in the front room, opened them to let in a burst of sunshine, and immediately saw the problem. The same old, worn carpet was still in the apartment. It smelled like someone had run a carpet cleaning machine over it, but other than that, no change. Unfortunately, Thorsen had backed herself into a corner. On the one hand, with the way the carpet was, she didn’t want to move into this apartment. On the other hand, she had already moved out of her previous home, turned in her keys, had all of her possessions waiting in a moving truck right outside, and was unable to reach the property manager who had given her the carpet assurances. She’d gone out of her way to avoid double rent, so the last thing she wanted to do now was pay for a hotel and rent a storage unit in the hopes the manager Troy Pickard Danger Underfoot