The landlord deserves zero empathy in these cases. It is his job to select a reliable tenant, that's usually his entire job. Anybody else who fails completely with their responsibilities at their job can expect to be fired and lose their income, or worse. There's an extremely large surplus of honest, tidy and reliable tenants, so it's not a problem for a responsible landlord to avoid going to court, if they just put in the minimum effort at doing their job. And if they can't handle that, they should sell the real estate and not be a landlord.