Airbnb Says It's Not Bound By 'Anti-Tenant' Leases
The home-sharing site filed a motion to dismiss the suit lodged by AIMCO Venezia LLC and Park La Brea LLC, which are subsidiaries of Apartment Investment and Management Co., a large national landlord known as Aimco. Airbnb said that Aimco added a provision to its lease agreements that purports to prohibit any subleasing of its apartments after deciding that all participants in home-sharing services — hosts and guests — cause “stress and disruption.”
Now, Airbnb said, the owner wants a third party to enforce its “blanket ban of people it views as undesirable at its luxury apartment properties.”
“This complaint seeks to shift the burden of enforcing questionable, anti-tenant provisions from Aimco to Airbnb,” Monday’s motion said. “Aimco’s attempt to force a third party to police lease restrictions that systematically exclude people it deems unwanted from its luxury buildings is untenable as a matter of law.”
The suit was filed in state court in February and removed to federal district court by Airbnb last month. It includes allegations that an Airbnb guest showed up at the wrong apartment at 3 a.m. and then ran away after knocking on the door, that another guest then got into a fight, and that apartment security had to break up a party hosted by Airbnb guests on a separate occasion.
This cost the landowner extra money, the suit claims, because it had to beef up security, execute sweeps, evict tenants, repair property damage, and make good with the frustrated neighbors of Airbnb tenants.
Aimco alleges that it reached out to the company identifying properties within its complexes it knew to be posted on Airbnb, which it said is a violation of California municipal codes forbidding short-term rentals and Aimco's standard lease agreements, which do not allow sublets. After first asking for a copy of the lease agreements and other information, the home-sharing platform then responded by saying it doesn’t mediate disputes between hosts and landlords, according to the complaint.
Airbnb said in its motion to dismiss that its terms of service advise hosts to be aware of their responsibilities under local laws and that it requires hosts to “represent and warrant” that their listings will not violate the terms of agreements with third parties. In a footnote, the company also said that it does not believe home-sharing activity constitutes a sublease or lease assignment, but rather a license granted by hosts for guests to use the listed properties.
The motion also argues that the complaint fails to include any specific allegations that Aimco suffered “irreparable loss of real property value and rental income” because of the activity, though it hypothesizes that a single adverse event could cause such harm. The complaint also fails to include allegations that Airbnb caused the alleged breaches of contract by the tenants, which is required for the landlord’s interference claims, Airbnb said.
“Here, Aimco alleges that it was its tenants’ actions — not Airbnb’s conduct as a hosting platform — that caused the alleged breaches of Aimco’s lease agreements,” the motion said. “The complaint’s allegations establish that Aimco’s tenants were predisposed to engage in home-sharing and chose to do so voluntarily.”
The suit also contains claims for trespass and aiding and abetting trespass, which Airbnb said also both fail. There are no allegations that Airbnb itself trespassed, and guests that stay in Airbnb accommodations are not trespassing either, the motion said. Even if home-sharing did constitute an unauthorized sublease, they would only be trespassing if they were told to leave and refused, something not alleged in the complaint, the company argued.
In addition, Airbnb said that all of Aimco’s claims are preempted by the Communications Decency Act, which it said protects websites against claims arising from online third-party content, like the host listings on its platform.
The property owner is proposing to represent a class that consists of all owners of multi-unit apartments who can show, through Airbnb records, that their tenants were subletting through the platform. Airbnb also filed a motion to strike the class allegations on Monday, arguing that the proposed class definition leaves out an important piece of Aimco’s primary cause of action in failing to mention the anti-sublet clauses tenants are alleged to have violated.
“The proposed class on its face therefore includes innumerable owners of multi-unit apartment buildings who permit their tenants to list their units for short- and long-term accommodations on Airbnb, either expressly or in the absence of any prohibition,” the motion said.
Attorneys for Aimco and Airbnb did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
Aimco is represented by Robert C. O’Brien and R.C. Harlan of Larson O’Brien LLC and Michael T. Williams or Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell LLP.
Airbnb is represented by Jonathan H. Blavin, Joshua Patashnik, Jordan C. Segall, Hailyn J. Chen and Brad D. Brian of Munger Tolles & Olson LLP.
The case is La Park La Brea A LLC et al. v. Airbnb Inc. et al., case number 2:17-cv-04885, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
--Additional reporting by Dave Simpson. Editing by Alanna Weissman.
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