Legal Occupant Primacy

Intent

To protect the interest of the legal occupant of a residential or commercial space over the interests of others. To protect service providers from liability when making decisions respecting the legal occupant primacy. To deter the use of legal occupant primacy as a tool in fraudulent activity.

Definitions

A legal occupant of a residential or commercial space is either the owner of the space or the current lessee of the space.

The term space is extended to include electronic or digital space which is allocated or governed by a central authority or federation of cooperating authorities such as a telephone number, email address, or internet domain.

A service provider is a government agency or public utility or commercial service provider including but not limited to electric, gas, insurance, internet, landscaping, maintenance, phone, sewer, warranty, water.

Proposal

When a current legal occupant of a space engages a service provider to start a service related to the space, and there is already an open service account for a former occupant, and the current legal occupant provides proof of legal occupancy, the service provider MUST immediately suspend any other accounts related to the space and open the start the service for the current legal occupant.

A service provider who suspends an existing account due to the legal occupant primacy of the current legal occupant shall be protected from liability for any claims the former occupant may bring related to the suspension of the former occupant’s service related to the space. A service provider who mistakenly suspends an existing account due to a fraudulent claim of legal occupancy shall be protected from liability for any claims the current legal occupant may bring if the the service provider acted with due diligence.

A service provider shall NOT be protected from liability against the current legal occupant from claims that the service provider failed to respect legal occupant primacy when presented with true and correct evidence of legal occupancy.

Any person falsely or fraudulently claiming to be the current legal occupant of a space, including but not limited to providing false or fraudulent evidence of legal occupancy, shall be charged with a felony misdemeanor if the attempt failed or a felony restorable violation if the attempt succeeded and the current legal occupant was harmed or suffered any damages or financial losses due to the attempt.

Discussion

This proposal is a solution to the following infuriating situation: A person who buys a house or commercial space or leases an apartment or commercial space, and attempts to start service for utilities, internet, insurance, etc. and is told that they cannot start service because someone else already has an account and didn’t stop their account coinciding with the sale or lease of the space. The legal occupant of the space therefore cannot fully enjoy or utilize their purchased or leased space because of the former owner or lessee’s failure to properly close their service accounts related to the space. Typically in a situation like this, the service provider claims that they cannot suspend the other account and that the account owner has to call in to stop it, and that the service provider cannot even contact the current account holder due to some perceived privacy violation.

A similar example involving a telephone number: A person who buys a newly constructed house, where the plot was previously owned by the construction company, and the address was linked to the construction company’s phones, is suddenly approached by law enforcement because they received an emergency call for that address, but nobody at the residence made an emergency call. The person who made the emergency call works for the construction company that built the house, and the person’s work cell phone is owned by the company and is linked to the property address in the telephone company’s system that reports the address of an emergency call to law enforcement. The law enforcement office, seeing there is no emergency there and that the resident’s phone number is not the number that called, doesn’t have the ability to change the link between the phone number and the address and refers the resident to the telephone company. The telephone company refuses to even talk to the resident about someone else’s phone number citing privacy concerns, and refers the resident to talk to law enforcement. The telephone company won’t even contact the person who made the emergency call to check if they need to update their address, citing “privacy concerns” even though that information wouldn’t need to be shared with the resident who called. The resident has to find the name of the construction company and contact them and tell them that someone in their company still has a phone linked to the property that was sold and that they need to contact the phone company and update the address on all their company phones. Since this has never happened before and also it seems like a lot of work, and without any legal obligation to do so, the construction company ignores the request. The resident cannot provide the emergency caller’s name or number because neither law enforcement nor the telephone company will share that information because of privacy concerns, yet they also won’t do the work of contacting the owner of that phone number and updating their address. After a few more incidents of law enforcement showing up at the property because of the incorrect link between a former occupant and the property address, the law enforcement officers eventually agree to do a conference call with the telephone company and resolve the situation.

When this proposal is adopted, given the same situation a service provider would simply ask the current legal occupant to prove their legal occupancy by providing an executed purchase or lease agreement and supporting identity documents. After checking the provided documents, a service provider can then safely suspend any open accounts and open a new account for the new current legal occupant, or in the emergency call example remove the link between the former occupant and the property and create a link between the new legal occupant’s phone number and the property. The service provider is thus providing good customer service to both customers — not charging the former occupant for services they cannot possibly be using and not preventing the new legal occupant from using the service, and also not sending law enforcement to the wrong address for an emergency call. Furthermore, the service provider can do this knowing they are protected from liability due to any complaints from the former legal occupant. Also, the service provider is protected from liability if they check the documents and believe them to be correct, and relying on those documents suspend the account of the current legal occupant because someone has fraudulently claimed to be the new legal occupant. When the true current legal occupant complains, the true legal occupant can press charges against the fraudster — not the service provider.