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# City Hall not going down without a fight
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/city-hall-not-going-down-without-a-fight/
- Published: 2004-11-10T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T05:28:18.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Government & Politics, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*Case against landlords headed for Supreme Court*

*By Daily Press staff*

CITY HALL — Rebuffed twice by an appeals court, attorneys here plan to ask California’s highest court to uphold a local law aimed at rooting out malicious landlords.

The California Second District Court of Appeals last month ruled portions of City Hall’s tenant harassment ordinance violated state law by making landlords unduly vulnerable to possible lawsuits. Days later, the City Council voted unanimously to appeal the decision to the California Supreme Court. The council was scheduled to discuss the matter further in a closed session Tuesday night.

At issue is how aggressively City Hall can pursue landlords it believes are harassing local renters. Landlords claimed it’s up to the tenant to file lawsuits if they think they’ve been harassed. Prosecutors maintained that City Hall shares that right.

“The City Council has unanimously authorized this office to seek review in the state Supreme Court, which we will do,” Deputy City Attorney Adam Radinsky said Tuesday. “We assume that the fact that the council voted unanimously on this issue reflects their long-standing commitment to preserve the tenant harassment law and to protect tenants from illegal evictions.”

Filed in 2002 by the landlord group Action Apartment Association Inc., the lawsuit is being prosecuted by Rosario Perry, an outspoken critic of the tenant harassment ordinance. Perry said City Hall acts like a Mafia boss and strong-arms local landlords by sending threatening letters rather than relying on courtrooms to resolve disputes. Prosecutors have sent out 200 to 250 threatening letters, but filed suit only a handful of times, Perry added.

Those same numbers are viewed differently by prosecutors, who said the low number of lawsuits proves the system is working and tenants are being protected from unruly landlords looking to profit off of vacancy decontrol. Radinsky said City Hall receives about 100 complaints each year under the tenant harassment ordinance, but has pressed charges only about 15 times.

City Hall’s tenant harassment ordinance has been challenged three times before and each time the city has prevailed, according to Radinsky.

Local landlord Doreen Dennis is coplaintiff in Action’s lawsuit against City Hall, a suit tossed out twice at the trial court level before being passed onto the appellate court, where it was considered twice. Perry said Dennis signed onto the lawsuit when City Hall threatened to pursue her criminally after she tried to evict a tenant in her building on Maple Street in Sunset Park. Dennis wanted to oust the tenant so her daughter could move into the four-unit building, Perry added.

In order to keep its tenant harassment law intact, City Hall will have to convince the Supreme Court that the contested portion of the law, which prohibits landlords from maliciously taking action to evict a tenant, is fair to landlords. The appellate court ruled that part of the ordinance jeopardized free access to the courts.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 10, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/111004.pdf?ref=smdp.com)