December 31, 2025
On December 31, 2025, DHKL, along with co-counsel Nicholas & Tomasevic, LLP and Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto, filed for preliminary approval of a class action settlement for approximately $43 million dollars. The case also resulted in millions of dollars of savings to Equity tenants who are no longer being charged Equity’s Standard Late Fee of 5% of monthly rent, minimum of $50. Under the settlement, Equity will be required to restore the excess unlawful late fees that nearly 200,000 California tenants were charged between September 3, 2010 and April 30, 2024. Equity will issue refunds amounting to 87% of all late rent fees paid by class members, reduced only by Equity’s actual costs of collecting each late rent as calculated by Plaintiffs’ trial expert. Tenants will also receive credits for late fees they have been charged but not yet paid, reduced by the Equity’s average cost of collecting late rent.
The settlement was reached after eleven years of hard-fought litigation, including an 8-day bench trial in June 2023 before the Honorable Jeffrey White of the U.S. District for the Northern District of California and significant post-trial briefing. On April 8, 2024, DHKL and co-counsel secured a landmark victory, when the Court ruled that Equity’s late fee of 5% of monthly rent, minimum of $50 was “null and void” and that Equity therefore violated California law.
Equity stopped charging this percentage-based late fee by May 1, 2024.
DHKL is also class counsel in the related case Van Cott v. Equity Residential, which involves different tenants who were charged the same unlawful late fee. The approximately $3 million settlement in that case has been preliminarily approved, and is pending final approval.