Yesterday’s the Wall Street Journal ran a first page above-the-fold article on tenant/landlord litigation over mold, which reminded me of an experience I had last year. 

I got a call from a tenant who lives in a single family patio home complaining of discoloration on the ceiling of the home’s second bathroom.  I went over to take a look and was fairly surprised at what I found – the ceiling which was bone white when I rented the property to the family a little more than a year ago had turned into a kaleidoscope of dark moldy colors. 

If you’re a Houston landlord then this isn’t something you want to see.  For the uninitiated: mold is big business around these parts.  Houston is basically a big paved over swamp.  Hot summers.  Lots of rain.  A good environment for both mold, mold remediation firms and for personal injury lawyers.  This has been a particularly hot issue in Texas since a jury awarded $32.1 million (later reduced) to a family whose home was infested with mold. 

So I called AMC Engineering & Environmental Services to come and take a look at the place.  The set up some equipment, took some air samples, charged me what seemed at the time to be an annoying amount of money, and eventually produced a clean bill of health for the property; the quantity of airborne particles in the bathroom being “less than the overall quantity of fungal structures identified in the outside ambient air.”
The report went on to state that there is no “absolute criteria” regarding mold and that the recommendations of the report were based on “standard environmental microbiological and industrial hygiene practices.”

Which brings us back to the Wall Street Journal report (note: the WSJ article is available online, but only to subscribers).  The science of mold is a pretty fuzzy one (sorry, couldn’t resist at least one pun) and the references frequently quoted in suits are a maze of conflicts of interest.  One frequently cited paper from the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine which was written by a group of experts who paid experts for the defense side in mold litigation. 

The punchline (for me, anyway):  You know this.  And your tenant probably knows too.  My wife is a physician and I’ve learned one interesting fact over the past few years: it’s not the bad doctors who get sued, it’s the obnoxious ones.  I don’t have the data to back it up, but I suspect that the same applies to landlords.  If you tenant brings up a health related issue then look into it.  If need be do an evaluation and show them the all-clear certificate.  It’s a good investment.