Back to News

Housing Clinic Files Two Briefs on Eviction Cases

Four students stand on the steps of the Connecticut Supreme Court building
(From left) Housing clinic students Dylan Shapiro, Uma Menon, Grady Martin, and Galen Fastie at the Connecticut Supreme Court.

The Housing Clinic at Yale Law School’s Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization filed two amicus briefs in February on behalf of a coalition of local legal nonprofit organizations that sought to stop wrongful evictions.

On March 2, the Connecticut Supreme Court heard arguments in the cases TOV Realty, LLC v. Suarez and Kosel Equity LLC v. MacGregor, two cases in which a large, out-of-state landlord sought to wrongfully evict tenants shortly after they filed complaints with their local municipal fair rent commissions (FRCs). The tenants were challenging unfair rent increases — 64% in one instance and 39% in the other. Evicting the tenants before the commissions issued rulings threatened to undermine tenants’ rights statewide, according to the brief.

The FRCs are a system devised by the Connecticut General Assembly in the 1960s to allow local governments to regulate the rental market by reigning in excessive and unreasonable rents and addressing deplorable living conditions. The volunteer commissioners, which the General Assembly expanded in 2025 to all municipalities with more than 15,000 residents, hear complaints from tenants and decide whether the rent being charged is fair. As the clinic wrote in its briefs, “FRCs reflect a local-led approach that balances landlords’ and tenants’ interests, while providing individualized rulings.”

The coalition of organizations represented by the Housing Clinic consisted of New Haven Legal Assistance Association, Connecticut Fair Housing Center, Connecticut Veterans Legal Center, and the Center for Children’s Advocacy. All the amici regularly represent clients in FRC proceedings and view FRCs as important tools to fight unfair rent increases, poor housing conditions, and displacement via gentrification. The clinic, which also represents tenants in FRC matters and in several different kinds of tenant protection litigation, sought to convey this perspective to the Connecticut Supreme Court as the justices heard their first-ever cases related to FRCs. 

The Housing Clinic also raised concerns about the use of generative AI by the landlords’ counsel in both cases. After the clinic brought the issue to the Supreme Court’s attention, the Court ordered the landlords’ counsel to explain the errors in their brief, presenting “the first time the state's highest court was forced to reckon with what appeared to be AI hallucinations and potential sanctions.” The Hartford Courant, Connecticut’s Hearst newspapers, and Connecticut Law Tribune covered the clinic’s briefing.

Yale Law School students Galen Fastie ’26, Dylan Shapiro ’26, Uma Menon ’27, and Grady Martin ’28 worked on the brief under the supervision of Clinical Lecturer Jeff Gentes and Clinical Professor of Law Anika Singh Lemar.