Green Real Estate - Tristan Green v. Britten Sims

Let’s be real: people have been kicked out of homes for less than $20—overdue library fines, a forgotten Netflix subscription, that one time you didn’t return a Redbox movie—but this case takes the cake. In Clinton, Oklahoma, a man is being evicted not just for twenty bucks in unpaid rent, but also because he allegedly failed to “remove fresh.” Yes. “Remove fresh.” Not “remove trash,” not “remove mold,” not “remove a meth lab.” Fresh. As in, the apartment might smell… too good? Or maybe it’s haunted by the ghost of Febreze past? We don’t know. The court doesn’t know. But someone at the District Court of Custer County sure thinks it’s grounds for tossing a tenant into the Oklahoma winter with nothing but $20 in arrears and a lingering citrus scent.

So who are these players in this high-stakes drama of olfactory overreach? On one side, we’ve got Tristan Green, doing double duty as both a human and a business entity—because apparently “Green Real Estate” is just Tristan Green with a business card and a dream. He owns a rental property at 112 S Nowahy Ave in Clinton, a town so small that if you blink while driving through, you’ll miss it and probably end up in Texas. On the other side is Britten Sims, the tenant, whose only known crime at this point is either not paying $20 or failing to de-fresh his life. We don’t know how long Sims has lived there, whether he keeps his blinds closed like a true introvert, or if he burns sage while listening to smooth jazz. But we do know he’s now at the center of a legal showdown that sounds like a rejected Seinfeld plot.

The saga begins, as most landlord-tenant tragedies do, with a notice. On January 7, 2022—yes, 2022, not 2026, which raises its own set of questions about time travel or clerical immortality—Tristan Green allegedly handed Britten Sims a notice demanding three things: pay the $20 in past-due rent, cough up an additional $149.44 in “unpaid fees” (plus “costs,” which could mean anything from court filing fees to Green’s emotional distress therapy), and, most bizarrely, remove fresh. That’s it. No elaboration. No clause. No explanation of what “fresh” even means. Is it a scent? A substance? A state of being? Did Sims install an air purifier that’s too effective? Did he start a side hustle selling homemade potpourri and overload the ventilation system with lavender zest? Was there a rogue bouquet of daisies that just… wouldn’t… die?

The filing doesn’t say. It just says: lease violation — not removing fresh. It’s like the legal version of a horoscope: vague, slightly ominous, and open to interpretation. “You will experience a disruption in your domestic harmony due to excessive freshness.” And yet, this is the hill Green Real Estate — aka Tristan Green — is willing to die on. Or at least, the hill he’s willing to evict someone over.

Now, let’s talk about the money, because $20 might sound like nothing in the grand scheme of rent disputes. Average rent in Clinton is around $700 a month. Twenty bucks is a tank of gas. It’s two large pizzas from Domino’s with cheesy bread. It’s less than the fee Green is charging for being late with the $20. The “unpaid fees” total $149.44—more than seven times the actual rent shortfall. So what are these fees? Late fees? Administrative charges? A “freshness mitigation surcharge”? The filing doesn’t specify, but one can’t help but imagine a spreadsheet where Tristan Green added line items like “emotional discomfort: $25,” “extra paperwork: $30,” and “olfactory review board: $94.44.”

And here’s the kicker: the demand for money isn’t even the main goal. The relief sought? Eviction. Physical removal. You’re out. Keys on the counter, couch on the curb. All because of $20 and a smell that may or may not exist. There’s no mention of property damage, no noise complaints, no evidence of criminal activity—just a landlord who apparently woke up one day, took a deep breath, and said, “This… is too clean. This violates the lease.”

Now, legally speaking, landlords in Oklahoma can evict tenants for nonpayment of rent or lease violations. That part checks out. But the lease violation here is so poorly defined it might as well be written in invisible ink. “Not removing fresh” isn’t a standard clause. It’s not in the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act. It’s not in any landlord training manual unless it’s a typo for “not removing trash” or “not removing pets.” And yet, it’s being used as grounds to end someone’s tenancy. Which raises the question: was this phrase in the actual lease? Or did someone at Green Real Estate misread their own handwriting? Did “not removing feces” somehow become “not removing fresh” after a coffee spill on the document? We may never know.

And what does Green want? Well, he wants Sims out. That’s clear. He also wants the money—$20 in rent, $149.44 in fees, plus “costs,” which could balloon depending on how creative the court gets. But here’s the thing: $169.44 is not a fortune. It’s not even enough to cover a decent lawyer for an hour. Yet, the cost of this eviction process—filing fees, notary, time, court dates—probably exceeds that amount. So why go through all this? Pride? Principle? A vendetta against clean air?

This is where we, the people, must step in and ask: what is the endgame here? Is Tristan Green really losing sleep over $20? Or is this about control? About sending a message to the tenants of Custer County that no deviation—from rent payments to atmospheric conditions—will be tolerated? Is this eviction less about the money and more about asserting dominance in the great landlord-tenant power struggle?

Our take? This case is absurd. Not just petty—absurd. It’s the legal equivalent of calling the cops because your neighbor mowed their lawn too well. It’s a bureaucratic overreaction wrapped in a typo and served with a side of eviction notice. And while we don’t excuse nonpayment of rent—$20 is still rent, folks—the disproportionate response here is laughable. Charging nearly $150 in fees for a $20 shortfall is predatory. Evicting someone over a smell described as “fresh” is borderline surreal.

But here’s what we’re rooting for: we’re rooting for Britten Sims to walk into court smelling like a meadow after rain, holding a signed copy of the lease that says nothing about fragrance control. We’re rooting for the judge to look at Tristan Green and say, “Sir, did you mean trash? Or mold? Or… fresh?” And then burst out laughing. We’re rooting for common sense to win. For proportionality. For a world where you can’t be kicked out of your home because your apartment smells like hope and lavender.

Until then, let this case stand as a warning: in Custer County, Oklahoma, cleanliness isn’t next to godliness. It’s next to eviction.