Protecting renters from predatory landlords
At Notre Dame Law School, the Eviction Clinic gives students real-world experience.
In 2009, Elkhart native Tina McQueary moved into a gutted house in her hometown—it had no kitchen, shower, or drywall, only a single toilet, and a need for a new roof and windows.
Rather than rent, she and the landlord agreed to a land contract, where she would fix up the house and her payments would amount to monthly mortgage installments. Working a minimum-wage job, McQueary and her son patiently did the work over the next seven years.
“We lived like trolls for three years—no kitchen, no nothing,” McQueary said. “We bought a new furnace, new doors, all new windows. We had to buy them one a month.”
Yet in 2018, when she had saved enough to finish buying off the house, her landlord seemed to suddenly realize the increased value of the property. He sued her for not paying rent—just weeks after her son died.
The kitchen of the Elkhart house when McQueary moved in, showing exposed studs with no drywall or ceiling, and the kitchen after she and her son did their own construction work and turned it into the family home, where she now cares for five of her grandchildren.
“It was bad,” she said. “How do you grieve your son dying when you’re getting thrown out of what you and your son lived to do?”
McQueary nearly gave up, but she needed the big house to take care of five of her grandkids. She knew she had proof of her payments, but she didn’t have unlimited money to fight all the way through the legal process. The first lawyer she hired charged her $30,000 before even getting to trial.
The landlord pressed on, likely believing she couldn’t afford the lengthy and costly legal process. He was correct. This is how powerful people often use the American legal system to their benefit.
Rather than run up more debt, McQueary’s lawyer suggested the Notre Dame Law School’s pro bono Eviction Clinic. David Pruitt, director of the Clinical Law Center, stepped in and won the case at trial, and then assigned law students Bennett Rogers and Jacob Orme to steer it through the appeals process in the state appellate and supreme courts.
A legal guillotine hung over McQueary’s head for seven years, but the Eviction Clinic’s successful representation led in 2025 to the McQueary family keeping their home.
“Being a different kind of lawyer is somebody that will advocate for people that might not have the resources to find legal counsel and would otherwise not be represented,” Rogers said. “We knew we could make a difference. And I couldn’t be happier that we got this result for someone like Tina.”
Clinical programs: Pushing students out of the classroom
Rogers grew up in Denver and attended Notre Dame for his undergraduate degree, awarded during the disrupted 2020 year. He returned to his alma mater for law school and said he was attracted to the Eviction Clinic during class work.
“I took a couple of land use and property type classes, and I really liked it and I wanted to get some firsthand litigation experience before I started working in the real world,” he said. “I worked at a law firm during both summers in law school, but it’s normally research and writing assignments. You’re never really steering the ship, and here we were given the opportunity to do that, to really make the case ours.”
For more than 65 years, the Notre Dame Law School has been operating real-world clinics, which have grown into 10 experiential learning programs. Six of the clinics work out of 725 Howard Street, a few blocks south of campus: Applied Mediation, Community Development, Eviction, Special Education, Veterans, and Immigration. The Exoneration Justice Clinic has offices across the street, the new Intellectual Property Clinic is located at Innovation Park, and the Lindsay and Matt Moroun Religious Liberty Clinic and Global Human Rights Clinic are on campus.
The clinics are set up for about eight students per section, Pruitt said. For five credit hours, he said, the students typically work more than 212 hours in a semester, a “significant” commitment.
McQueary’s case came to the Eviction Clinic in 2022, just as well-known justice advocate Judith Fox was retiring from what was then called the Economic Justice Clinic. It went to trial on the first day of classes in 2024, so Pruitt argued the court case himself.
Pruitt said McQueary bought the house with a land contract, a seller-financed agreement where the buyer, often with poor credit, makes installment payments directly to the seller, who holds the legal title until the full price is paid. The danger is that a single missed payment can lead to a default and loss of the home and previous payments.
McQueary agreed to pay $700 a month including insurance, but soon negotiated a reduction to $500 in order to afford the needed improvements. In a landlord-friendly state like Indiana, Pruitt said, land contracts are not well regulated: “They set up these contracts that are basically the wild, wild West.”
With all the work McQueary and her son had done, the five-bedroom house was worth more than twice the original agreement of $85,000. The seller, a landlord who owns many rental houses in Elkhart, filed a lawsuit claiming McQueary had not paid her rent. She had never considered her payments rent.
“He didn’t like the deal he had, and he was trying a get-out-of-jail card here because the house went up in value. And why not see if you can bully somebody and get the house,” Pruitt said. “We can’t help most people in these situations. They can’t hire lawyers, and so they have to fold.”
But the seller didn’t realize that McQueary kept payment receipts—his signed bank deposits, a practice her mother had taught her years ago.
Long process: Navigating the legal labyrinth
Third-year students Rogers and Orme were handed the case, under Pruitt’s direction, for the legal appeals process. To catch up, they had to read hundreds of pages of depositions, discovery material, trial transcripts, and the court’s decision. The case hinged on the legal concept of the statute of frauds unless certain “equitable doctrines” removed it from the statute.
“One of the big challenges was sorting through all of that and explaining to the Court of Appeals what each doctrine stood for and why both of the two important doctrines provided those grounds for relief for Tina,” Rogers said.
Rogers said writing the brief for the Court of Appeals took a collaborative effort and long nights working on “writing as an art.” The court’s affirmative decision was sent to Pruitt by email, and the students read it and called McQueary, who broke down in tears at the good news.
“All I could do was cry,” McQueary said. “Very happy, very relieved. I had to leave work. I was so shook up because it was over.”
“That place meant a lot to her,” Rogers said. “She had a lot of family events, both good and sad, in that house. And so to be able to stay there . . . that was not a house, that was a home.”
Rogers and Orme then had to persuade the Indiana Supreme Court to reject taking up the case, meaning that the appellate decision would stand. More long nights followed, and the short denial statement from the state’s highest court was less dramatic, especially because it came after the students had graduated. But McQueary was thrilled again. “They are some nice young people,” she said. “They’re going to make good attorneys.”
Rogers is now clerking for a judge in Greensboro, North Carolina. He said his experience with the Eviction Clinic inspired him to aim for a law practice that will allow him to continue pro bono work for people with housing needs.
“The biggest takeaway I had from all of this was that your work really does impact people’s lives,” Rogers said. “Knowing that your work makes a difference, that is something that really kept us going. This wonderful lady gets to live in her house and it’s rightfully hers.”
Broader advocacy: The clinic’s impact on tenant rights
Serving clients like McQueary one individual at a time is satisfying and important even if its community impact is narrow. But the Eviction Clinic also does advocacy work, which provides a smaller impact to a much wider range of people.
Last year, law students worked with Indiana State Senator Liz Brown, a Republican representing Fort Wayne, to change a state law for the benefit of renters. Brown is a 1980 Notre Dame alumna and the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Pruitt said the problem was that landlords considering whether to rent a place first check if there is an eviction filing against the potential tenant. Even if the case was dismissed, it still stays on the person’s legal record.
“It doesn’t matter whether there’s merit to it or not,” Pruitt said. “If a prospective landlord sees an eviction case has been filed against you, they’re not going to rent to you.”
Under a 2022 law, tenants could file a motion to seal any unsuccessful eviction actions, but Pruitt said that rarely happened—only about 10 percent of more than 30,000 dismissed eviction cases were sealed in 2024. The result is that the properties these tenants can rent are of lower quality, or they can’t rent at all. The problems were occurring mainly in South Bend and Indianapolis.
“A lay person trying to navigate filing something in court when likely most of their experiences with the legal system have not been positive—they’re not going to do it,” Pruitt said.
Pruitt invited Brown to discuss the issue with the Eviction Clinic, and then the students sent her a white paper with a proposal to change state law. Rather than require a motion to seal dismissed eviction cases, the cases would be automatically sealed. Brown supported the idea, scheduling a hearing on the first day of the 2025 legislative session.
“The Eviction Clinic students found quite honestly that these are barriers that we can fix,” Brown said. “So it was a simple thing in terms of the process to have them sealed, but I think it really is incredibly impactful.”
Brown helped get the apartment association on board, and two Eviction Clinic students—Jared DeFelice and Robert Stone Curl—went to Indianapolis and testified at the committee hearing on the bill. Brown said they were professional and passionate about making a difference.
“How can you vote against something like that when students have put this much time into it?” she said. “Their expertise is invaluable. I look forward to working with Notre Dame law students if they have suggestions for us, because obviously they have the academic talent there and we might as well tap into it.”
Pruitt said tenant advocacy and McQueary’s case fit the Eviction Clinic’s mission for both education training and service impact.
“For a long time, Notre Dame Law School has allowed its students to demonstrate their commitment to justice by representing people who cannot afford a lawyer to fight for them,” Pruitt said. “As Notre Dame Law School expands its impact around the globe, I am thrilled that we have incredibly talented students who will continue that fight helping people at the local and state level.”
