Consequential Damages

Full Definition

Consequential damages (also called special damages) are losses a tenant suffers beyond the deposit amount itself, which are a direct and foreseeable consequence of the landlord's breach. In a security deposit context, a tenant might claim consequential damages for: hotel or temporary housing costs incurred because the wrongfully withheld deposit funds were needed for a new security deposit; storage fees for belongings that could not be moved because of cash flow problems caused by the missing deposit; late fees imposed by a new landlord because the tenant could not pay the new deposit on time; or other financial losses directly traceable to the landlord's failure to return the funds. Consequential damages are more difficult to recover than the deposit itself and the statutory penalty, because the tenant must prove a direct causal link between the landlord's breach and each specific loss, and the losses must have been foreseeable to the landlord at the time of the tenancy. They are most appropriate in larger civil court cases where the tenant has documented every out-of-pocket expense.