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Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices: Wyo. Stat. Ann. §§ 40-12-101 through 40-12-114 Consumer Protection Act

Prohibited Practices: 16 enumerated practices, including a catchall generally prohibiting unfair or deceptive acts or practices.

Scope: In course of business and in connection with a consumer transaction, defined as the advertising, sale, offering for sale, or distribution of any merchandise, defined to include real or personal property, services, intangibles or any article of value, for purposes that are primarily personal, family or household.

Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices: 8.1.1.1 Sales Misrepresentations

Federal and state laws governing manufacturing and safety standards, installation of homes, financing, transportation, warranties, and repossession are analyzed in other books in this series.1 UDAP statutes can provide additional remedies for violations of these other statutes and can also be used to define additional unfair or deceptive manufactured home practices.

Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices: 8.1.1.4 Land-Home Packages

The sale of a manufactured home along with a lot to install the home is called a “land-home package.” In some parts of the country, these land-home packages are more common than purchases of homes to be placed in manufactured home communities. Usually the lot owner is a separate entity than the home dealer. The lot owner will subdivide land into lots, and establish a business arrangement with a manufactured home dealer. The consumer then effectively engages in two transactions, a home purchase and a real estate closing, although the consumer may view these as a single transaction.

Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices: 8.1.2.2 Tying Arrangements in Sale of Manufactured Homes, Utilities, or Other Products; Discriminatory Practices

A common complaint about manufactured home communities is that the community owner requires residents to purchase utility service or other goods or services from a specified supplier. Some state manufactured home community statutes prohibit this practice, or prohibit making a profit on certain required purchases.31 Even if the practice does not run afoul of such a statute, it may violate the state UDAP statute.

Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices: 8.1.2.3 Unfair Restriction on Tenant’s Sale of the Home

A manufactured home community may engage in unfair practices where it assesses charges or places other restrictions on a resident’s sale of the resident’s own manufactured home.36 Such restrictions may also amount to the tort of intentional interference with a prospective contract.37 It is not unfair, however, for a manufactured home community to offer a low price for a home when other buyers were available to the consumer.38

Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices: 8.1.2.4 Licensure, Leases, Restrictions on Fees, Habitability

Operating a manufactured home community without a license required by the state is a UDAP violation.42 Other UDAP case law prohibits manufactured home communities from requiring tenants to sign leases that include illegal and unenforceable clauses,43 even if the community does not enforce these clauses.44 But the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that a community owner’s demand for a rental amount that had been disapproved under a rent control statute was not

Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices: 8.1.2.5 Manufactured Home Community Eviction Practices

Most states have statutes restricting the grounds on which manufactured home community residents can be evicted.49 In Wisconsin, the issue is addressed in part by UDAP regulations that, among other things, require manufactured home communities to disclose the grounds for eviction, prohibit retaliatory eviction, and prohibit the community owner from evicting a resident in order to make the site available for another buyer who is purchasing a home from the community owner.50

Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices: 8.1.2.6.1 Resident ownership of the manufactured home community

The fundamental problem for manufactured home community residents is that they own manufactured homes that are installed on rented land, leaving them extremely vulnerable to overreaching by the community owner. “Mobile homes” are not really very mobile; they cost thousands of dollars to move, not counting the potential for serious structural damage to the home. Moreover, there may be no other place to go. In many areas there are no manufactured home communities that will accept a home moved from another park.

Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices: 8.1.2.6.2 Manufactured home community legislation

Most states have enacted specific legislation dealing with manufactured home communities.60 Some of the state statutes are comprehensive, dealing with a wide array of issues faced by residents in these communities. Many of these statutes require a written lease, good cause for eviction, disclosure of fees, and notification to residents of changed land use. Typical statutes also prohibit unreasonable rules, waiver of statutory rights, retaliatory evictions, and restrictions on a resident’s choice of vendors.

Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices: 8.1.2.6.3 Referral to manufactured home community residents associations

Whether or not it is practical for an attorney to represent a manufactured home community resident, it is useful to refer the resident to a local, statewide, or national manufactured home community resident association. Associations use lay advocates to assist residents, and may also enable a number of residents with similar problems to obtain joint legal representation. They also bring abuses to the attention of policymakers and work for policy changes in the state.

Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices: 8.2.1 Introduction

UDAP statutes can be used to challenge landlord-tenant practices except in states where leases of real property are outside the statute’s scope.64 Depending on state procedural rules, a tenant may be able to assert these UDAP claims as counterclaims in the eviction case.65

Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices: 8.2.2 Apartment Finders

Fraudulent apartment finders promise, for a fee, to find housing for low-income people to rent or rent-to-own. In areas where housing is scarce or substandard, or where segregated housing patterns lock people out of large portions of the housing market, apartment finders have considerable appeal. False and exaggerated claims by apartment finders are appropriate subjects for UDAP claims.70

Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices: 8.2.3 Security Deposits and Calculation of Rents

UDAP regulations in Massachusetts and Wisconsin require landlords to disclose all terms and all tenants’ rights pertaining to security deposits and to itemize any claims against the deposit.77 Landlords may not withhold excessive amounts from the security deposit without justification.78 Many states have provisions in their UDAP statute or regulations that prohibit misrepresentations about the need for repairs.

Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices: 8.2.4 Rental Agreements

Rental agreements must be readable83 and may not contain illegal or unenforceable terms.84 Rents may be increased during the lease term only if agreed upon and disclosed in advance.85 Obtaining the tenants’ signatures on a lease by taking advantage of their inability to speak or read English may be a UDAP violation.86 False or misleading statements made during the negotiation of a lease renewal may give rise

Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices: 8.2.5.1 Substandard Housing

A landlord who rents out an apartment impliedly represents that it is in compliance with applicable health and safety codes; if it is not, the landlord has committed a UDAP violation.90 Other UDAP violations include renting out residential premises in which there is lead paint that exceeds statutory limits91 and collection of the full amount of rent while the unit is in violation of the housing code or where the unit has material defects rendering it unsafe or unfit.

Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices: 8.2.5.2 Authority to Rent Out a Unit; Failure to Obtain Occupancy Certificates

It is a UDAP violation to misrepresent one’s authority under the rules of a cooperative apartment building to rent a unit to a prospective subtenant.100 It is also a per se UDAP violation to rent property and accept rent payments when the landlord has failed to obtain a certificate of occupancy required by state law101 or the rental is otherwise illegal.102 Since the licensing requirement is meant to protect the pub

Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices: 8.2.5.3 Misrepresentations Related to Crime Prevention

A landlord who represents that an apartment building has various features to protect against crime may be liable under the UDAP statute for an assault upon a tenant, if the criminal act was reasonably foreseeable and a direct and proximate result of the deception.105 A landlord’s misrepresentation of the tenant’s right to have additional locks put on their door is actionable pursuant to a UDAP statute, when the tenant was assaulted by a person who obtained a key to their apartment through the landlord’s negligence.

Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices: 8.2.6 Utilities

A landlord must provide agreed-upon utility services and may not cause the services’ termination.107 Violation of the state’s utility service laws and regulations may be a UDAP violation.108 It is a UDAP violation to have a tenant pay for heat and hot water without a written agreement, contrary to a state health regulation.109

Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices: 8.2.7 The Tenant’s Early Termination

Damages for a tenant’s breach of the lease are limited to those specified by state law. A “termination fee” in a lease, under which the tenant who terminated the lease early was charged one and one-half months’ rent even if the landlord re-rented the unit immediately, was an unenforceable penalty.111 But the evidence was insufficient to establish a violation of the UDAP statute’s unconscionability standard because the tenant did not introduce evidence of the actual costs to the landlord of early termination.

Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices: 8.2.8.1 Deceptive Notices to Quit

A federal court has found potentially deceptive a landlord’s filing of a complaint for possession without proper notice to the tenant that the landlord was terminating their lease and the basis for the eviction.113 A landlord’s form notice to quit was deceptive where it included an image of a uniformed police officer and wording that implied that the landlord would resort to self-help eviction, and where it failed to disclose the tenant’s right to judicial process to contest the eviction.114

Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices: 8.2.8.3 Excessive or Unjustified Fees

Misrepresenting that a security deposit was withheld because repairs were necessary violates a UDAP prohibition against misrepresentation of the necessity of repairs.127 It is unfair and deceptive to sue tenants for damage to property and cleaning costs before they have vacated, or to falsely claim in a suit that attorney fees are due and owing.128 It is also unfair for a landlord to charge excessive late payment penalties or institute unnecessary summary ejectment proceedings.