A Summary Proceeding: Fighting Contradictions in Eviction Court
“I’m 76 years old, and I have never won anything in my life before, but this . . . this is going on my refrigerator.”
Andrew Chandler is an attorney at the Legal Aid Society in Louisville. He practices housing law, representing tenants in eviction court and other venues to ensure their rights to safe and stable housing. He is a proud dues-paying member of the UAW Local 2320 and the Louisville Tenants Union.
Our homes are the foundation of our lives. It is where we take our shoes off, break bread with loved ones, sing to ourselves unashamedly, cry with a messiness not possible elsewhere, and hide from the world crashing around us outside, sometimes all in the same day. That reality remains true regardless of whether we rent or own the place where we dwell. It is our home. I, alongside approximately 40% of the population of Jefferson County, am a renter. It stands to reason that when a legal action is brought for the purpose of removing us from our homes—to dispossess us of that sacred place which serves as the staging ground for our lives—it ought to be a carefully deliberated one, replete with serious procedural guardrails.
However, upon spending a morning in the Jefferson District Court Forcible Detainer Division (“eviction court”), one struggles to locate the sense of justice that should be commanded by a proceeding against a person’s right to remain in their home. On the same morning as this article’s writing, there were 126 eviction cases scheduled for disposition in Jefferson District Court over the course of a three-hour period. That equates to less than ninety seconds per case. In 2024, 16,017 forcible detainer complaints were filed in Jefferson County, which amounts to nearly 64 eviction cases on an average business day. That figure accounts for 33% of all civil filings outside of family court.
The majority of eviction cases are decided at the first appearance. Did the tenant fail to pay rent? Yes or no. Have they fully caught up on their rental debt in the time it took for this case to arrive in court? Yes or no. Did the tenant engage in a material breach of their lease based on the word of the property manager? Yes or no. Do you want to fight it and end up with an eviction on your record, relegating you to the status of an “undesirable tenant” in an already cramped rental housing market? Or do you want to just accept a deal today to move out within seven days? Yes or no. It runs like a mill. A Choose Your Own Adventure book that often inevitably leads to dispossession, especially if the tenant is unrepresented, which is true in the unfortunate majority of cases.
Identifying this issue, the Louisville-Jefferson County Metro Government enacted a right to counsel ordinance in April 2021 to ensure free legal representation to low-income renters. I began working in the Housing Unit at the Legal Aid Society in September 2024 to serve alongside my colleagues in our effort to make that promise a reality for as many tenants as possible.
Still, today, most tenants remain unrepresented. All but a very few small-time landlords, who carry a minute fraction of the docket, come to court with an attorney carrying a thick stack of eviction cases, ready to have them stamped summarily one by one. The vast majority of these cases are decided without a hearing wherein testimony is taken from both sides and substantive issues are argued. The vast, vast majority of these cases are decided without a jury trial, even though tenants have the right to one. There has, to my knowledge, only been one jury trial fought by a tenant in the half-decade since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. I represented that tenant, and we won. See Divya Karthikeyan, “Dosker Manor resident took his eviction case to jury trial — and won”, Louisville Public Media (Mar. 24, 2025).
In that case, the Louisville Metro Housing Authority had accused my client of disrupting the peaceful enjoyment of the property and behaving in a disorderly fashion when he repeatedly complained about maintenance issues to property management staff. Such issues included the loss of power to his unit for several days, which resulted in him having to throw out a refrigerator full of food. His landlord, the housing authority, wanted to evict him for that. My client, a 76-year-old living on a fixed income of Social Security disability benefits after a hard-earned retirement from his career as a carpenter, testified that before he managed to move into Dosker Manor, he was homeless. A jury of my client’s peers—many of them being renters themselves, and having heard the entirety of the parties’ testimony and arguments in the dead of winter knowing what consequences would befall him if he were evicted—decided that he had not committed a lease violation. Complaining about one’s living conditions and expressing frustration toward management, they felt, was not a basis to evict. There was no cause to enter a forcible detainer judgment against him. No eviction, said the jury.
My client had walked to his eviction trial that day. I drove him home along with my colleague after the jury reached a favorable verdict in his favor that evening. Holding a copy of that verdict in his hand and a tear of relief in his eye, he told us: “I’m 76 years old, and I have never won anything in my life before, but this . . . this is going on my refrigerator.” My client has a roof over his head, after working a lifetime as a carpenter who helped build other people’s houses for a living, because a jury of his peers believed him and determined that he had a right to remain in his home.
The right to that kind of justice—i.e., the right to a trial by a jury of one’s peers—is enshrined within the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of Kentucky. Section 7 of the latter authority demands that such proceeding “shall be held sacred, and the right thereof remain inviolate.” That right has been reaffirmed by statute in the Kentucky forcible detainer law governing eviction proceedings in our Commonwealth, which, upon enactment in 1978, guaranteed tenants the right to a jury trial. KRS 383.210. Moreover, if a tenant is indigent, they are entitled to proceed without having to pay any costs necessary for their defense, which includes jury fees. KRS 453.190; see Whitcher v. Hous. Auth. of Henderson, 672 S.W.3d 58 (Ky. Ct. App. 2023) (finding clear error where the lower court denied a tenant’s fee waiver request despite that litigant meeting the objective statutory standard defining “poor persons”).
However, nearly two decades after the General Assembly solidified tenants’ right to a jury trial within landlord-tenant law in 1978, the Kentucky Court of Appeals pronounced: “Forcible detainer actions are meant to be simple, speedy and inexpensive.” Baker v. Ryan, 967 S.W.2d 591, 593 (Ky. Ct. App. 1997). In short, such cases are “designed to be summary proceedings.” Id. That case foreclosed the ability of eviction courts to order depositions and held that civil discovery rules are inconsistent with forcible detainer proceedings, meaning that a district court that orders discovery in an eviction case would be abusing its authority.
Still, we need not resign ourselves to allowing eviction proceedings to be fully bereft of justice. Testimony must be taken, evidence introduced and appropriately scrutinized, credibility weighed, legal arguments considered, and yes—a jury trial, that most sacred, democratic proceeding resting at the foundation of our legal system, shall be provided upon request by a tenant. And it is not mere procedure. My client’s win at trial last winter was substance. It was a hopeful victory amid an ever-worsening housing crisis. The staff at the Legal Aid Society now routinely request jury trials, often over the objection of the landlord’s counsel. Our courts schedule them appropriately. Such practice is plainly compatible with what the law provides, and moreover, it draws our legal system closer to meeting the level of seriousness that a person’s right to housing demands.