Background
Kenneth and Johnathan Cody, brothers who had rented an apartment from St. Charles Square Limited Partnership since April 2019, renewed their lease on June 26, 2025. Johnathan suffers from bipolar disorder, and Kenneth serves as his caregiver, monitoring his medication and providing transportation to medical appointments. Their lease agreement prohibited tenants from behaving in a loud or obnoxious manner that disturbs others or engaging in threatening behavior.
On August 18, 2025, the property manager, Carrie Picciona, served the Codys with a 10-day notice to terminate their tenancy. The notice alleged that Johnathan had engaged in disturbing, harassing, and threatening behavior toward another resident—specifically, repeatedly knocking on the neighbor’s door and attempting to engage in conversation after the neighbor repeatedly declined further interaction. The notice referenced complaints dating back to September 2024, with the most recent incident occurring on August 14, 2025. St. Charles Square filed an eviction suit on September 4, 2025, and the case went to trial on October 7, 2025.
The Court’s Holding
The Illinois Appellate Court reversed the trial court’s judgment and ruled that the circuit court’s finding of a lease breach was against the manifest weight of the evidence. The appellate court held that St. Charles Square failed to meet its burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendants actually violated the lease agreement.
The court found critical evidentiary gaps. Picciona, the property manager, was not a witness to any incident on August 14, 2025. She testified only that she received emails and that police came to the property, but when asked to describe the contents of those emails, her testimony was properly excluded as hearsay. Kenneth’s testimony that he apologized for “any kind of un-comfort” to the neighbor did not establish what Johnathan actually did or failed to do. The court observed that Kenneth initially testified Johnathan left the apartment on August 14 but later retracted that statement, though the court found his testimony about his brother’s whereabouts less credible.
Critically, St. Charles Square presented no testimony from the complaining neighbor, the police, or anyone with direct knowledge of what occurred on August 14, 2025. The fact that Johnathan had a manic episode requiring hospitalization on August 18—four days after the alleged incident—and the fact that Kenneth later agreed with police to keep his brother away from the neighbor did not, in the appellate court’s view, prove that a material lease breach occurred. The court rejected the argument that the trial court could reasonably infer a violation based on circumstantial facts; instead, it held that the burden was on the landlord to affirmatively prove what happened and that the conduct constituted a material violation of the lease.
Key Takeaways
- Landlords seeking to evict for lease breach must prove the violation with admissible evidence; they cannot rely on the eviction notice itself or hearsay complaints to meet their burden of proof.
- The trial court’s findings must be based on evidence presented at trial; inferences or assumptions about what may have occurred are insufficient to prove a material breach by a preponderance of the evidence.
- When appellate courts review eviction judgments, they ask whether an opposite conclusion is apparent from the record or whether findings appear unreasonable or arbitrary—here, the appellate court found both to be true.
- A tenant’s disability and subsequent hospitalization do not, standing alone, establish lease violations, and the Fair Housing Act implications of eviction actions deserve consideration.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces that the burden of proof in eviction cases is on the landlord and that burden cannot be satisfied through inference, hearsay, or circumstantial suspicion. It protects tenants from losing their housing based on unsubstantiated allegations and underscores the importance of the hearsay rule in excluding unreliable evidence from eviction proceedings. For disabled tenants, the case signals that courts will scrutinize whether landlords have properly considered reasonable accommodation requests before pursuing eviction.
The opinion also clarifies that trial courts must base their factual findings on evidence actually admitted and heard at trial. A property manager’s testimony about complaints she received but cannot describe does not constitute proof of a lease violation. This decision may influence how Illinois landlords approach documentation and proof in eviction cases, particularly when relying on secondhand accounts of tenant misconduct.