Background
Tenant Brent Alvarez signed a one-year lease in 2016 to rent property from landlord Brogan Weybright for $5,000 per month. Alvarez remained after the lease expired without signing a new written agreement. He maintained that the parties orally reduced the rent first to $1,500 and later to zero, while Weybright testified that he merely allowed Alvarez additional time to pay because Alvarez was experiencing hardship.
Alvarez stopped making rental payments by 2020, although Weybright received payments from a COVID-19 landlord compensation fund until early 2021. In 2024, after Alvarez did not respond to emails seeking payment or a payment plan, Weybright served a 10-day nonpayment notice demanding $60,000 and brought a forcible entry and detainer action. The trial court found Alvarez not credible, found no oral agreement superseding the written lease or exchanging services for rent, and entered judgment awarding Weybright possession, costs, and attorney fees.
The Court’s Holding
The Oregon Court of Appeals affirmed. Declining discretionary de novo review, the court held that evidence supported the trial court’s factual findings. Those findings defeated Alvarez’s statutory-waiver argument because Weybright had not accepted rent with knowledge of a violation under ORS 90.412(2)(a), and the court found no credible evidence that Weybright accepted property-management services in place of rent under ORS 90.412(2)(b). Because no waiver occurred, Alvarez’s related argument that Weybright’s written notice was untimely also failed.
The court declined to consider Alvarez’s other arguments because they were not preserved and he did not request plain-error review. Alvarez had not argued at trial that the expired lease’s terms prevented use of the original rental rate, despite having signed the lease and introduced it as an exhibit. He likewise had not specifically argued that the termination notice was defective under ORS 90.394 because it overstated the rent owed.
Key Takeaways
- A landlord’s decision to delay collecting unpaid rent does not establish waiver under ORS 90.412(2) when the landlord neither accepts rent with knowledge of a violation nor accepts substitute performance.
- On non-de-novo review, the Court of Appeals is bound by trial-court factual findings supported by any evidence, including credibility findings rejecting an alleged oral rent-free agreement.
- A tenant must specifically raise lease-interpretation and defective-notice theories in the trial court to preserve them for appeal.
Why It Matters
The decision distinguishes a landlord’s temporary forbearance from the statutory forms of acceptance that can waive a right to terminate a tenancy. It also underscores that a general claim of a rent-free agreement does not necessarily preserve distinct appellate theories based on lease language or defects in a termination notice.
The opinion is a nonprecedential memorandum opinion under ORAP 10.30 and may be cited only as that rule permits.