As seen on:

A long-running class action lawsuit in King County, Washington has finally been settled, meaning mobile home landlords across the state will no longer be able to suddenly and frequently raise rent prices. The class action settlement affects approximately 60,000 to 70,000 tenants living in 1,600 mobile home parks in Washington State.

The class action lawsuit began in 2004 when tenants of a Shoreline mobile home park sued the owner for raising the rent on them twice in one year, which is illegal in the State of Washington. The owner belonged to Manufactured Housing Communities of Washington, an industry group that creates lease-agreement forms for its members that contained automatic conversion language. This conversion language allowed the landlords to automatically convert an annual lease to a month-to-month contract, essentially allowing the landlords to increase rent more than once a year, a practice that is illegal under Washington State law. State law also requires owners to give tenants a three-month notification of a rent increase, which the mobile home landlords were not providing.

“A lot of people, even if landlords are raising rents just once a year, are in dire straits. They can’t afford these ever increasing rents,” said an attorney representing the tenants.

The class action lawsuit settlement requires mobile-home park owners to drop the conversion language from its leases and stop using contracts that allowed them to automatically convert an annual lease to a month-to-month lease. The settlement does not provide reimbursements for class members, but it does allow the tenants to pursue back rent.

“While it took more than six years to reach a settlement, we are pleased that – finally -- every manufactured homeowner in the state will be living under a legal lease,” said the tenants’ attorney.

Anyone who’s had an airline lose their luggage or had to pay checked baggage fees is sure to cheer over this one. A Washington woman has filed a $5 million class action lawsuit against American Airlines for refusing to refund her $25 checked baggage fee after the airline lost her suitcase.

“American Airlines is just another example of how companies have forgotten about customer service,” the plaintiff said in a statement. “When American charges a fee for a baggage service it should deliver your bag, unharmed, or give you a refund.”

American Airlines reportedly damages, loses or delays 2,400 pieces of luggage every day, which is second only to Southwest Airlines. (Southwest, however, doesn’t charge fees for checked bags.) American Airlines was the first major airline to start charging fees for checked bags, which start at $25 for the first bag, $35 for the second bag and $100 for the third, fourth and fifth bags. When airlines charge you extra to check your bags, says the class action lawsuit, those fees represent a “clear and unambiguous agreement with passengers to handle bags with care and deliver them to their destination in a timely fashion.”

The plaintiff claims her lost bag contained more than $800 worth of items and she was forced to spend $300 on replacement clothes and toiletries while she waited for her bag to arrive. She then had to wait another 24 hours before the airline contacted her and told her it was lost forever and there was nothing they could do. American Airlines’ refusal to refund her checked baggage fee is a clear case of a company charging for a service that wasn’t delivered and then not giving the money back.

The U.S. Department of Transportation requires airlines to reimburse passengers for clothing and toiletries if their bags are lost or delayed, but it does not specify how much the clothing reimbursement should be, and it can take a significant period of time before any cash is actually seen. If the American Airlines checked baggage class action lawsuit is approved by a judge, it could mean millions of dollars in refunds to spurned travellers.