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Activists holding signs to protest evictions in New York City, 2021.
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Also Known As:
dispossession
Eviction, the process of dispossessing a person of land, be it lawful or unlawful. Subject to any statutory provisions, it is lawful if the person evicted has a right to possession inferior to that of the person carrying out the eviction. The delivery of possession under order of the court is sometimes called eviction. If the concerned parties do not have a landlord-tenant relationship, the process of dispossession is known as ejectment.
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Illustration of Irish peasants being evicted from their home during the Great Famine, 1848.
The law concerning evictions varies by jurisdiction, but there are some commonalities. In general, tenants have been excused from accepting premises infested by cockroaches or rats. Similarly, the failure of a landlord to uphold covenants to repair or heat the premises typically excuses the tenant from performance of covenants and justifies a refusal to pay rent or to abandon the premises. Such actions (or failures to act) are often cited when applying the doctrine of "constructive eviction," whereby a tenant may treat as an act of eviction any act of the landlord which conducts a nuisance or creates a disturbance or otherwise renders the premises unfit for the tenancy. The tenant is, however, required to abandon the premises within a reasonable time or else no such eviction is shown.
If the tenant abandons the premises without cause and refuses to pay rent, the lessor generally is permitted, in accordance with the doctrine of anticipatory breach of contract, to sue for complete damages without waiting until the end of the term. If a part of the premises is destroyed, the tenant in the absence of agreement must still continue to pay rent and to perform relevant covenants. The tenant is excused from further obligation under lease by total actual eviction by the landlord, or by eviction by title paramount, or by taking by eminent domain. Where the eviction is from only a part of the premises, the tenant may, if it is by act of the landlord, either abandon the lease or remain in possession without paying rent. Where the eviction is by title paramount, the lessor is not entitled to abandon the lease and must pay a proportionate part of the rent. Jurisdictions differ when there is partial eviction by eminent domain as to whether the tenant should pay rent and claim compensation for the taking or receive a reduction in his rent without any share in such compensation.
