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# Decision against City Hall could now be in jeopardy
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/decision-against-city-hall-could-now-be-in-jeopardy/
- Published: 2004-06-26T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T04:37:01.000Z
- Author: John Wood
- Tags: Real Estate & Housing, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*Ruling puts onus back on landlords*

Forced to make a decision or lose jurisdiction over the case, a state appellate court on Thursday agreed to consider again a lawsuit over whether City Hall can pursue landlords for evicting tenants maliciously or without cause.

The ruling gives the landlord group Action Apartment Assoc iation Inc. until July 8 to argue that a May decision in their favor should be upheld. The association had persuaded the court that a portion of Santa Monica’s tenant harassment ordinance violated state law because it made landlords unduly vulnerable to possible lawsuits from City Hall.

At issue is how aggressively City Hall can pursue landlords it believes are harassing renters. Landlords claim it’s up to the tenant to file lawsuits if they think they’ve been harassed. Prosecutors maintain City Hall shares that right because of its municipal tenant harassment ordinance.

City prosecutors filed for another hearing last week, claiming the May 25 ruling by the Second District Court of Appeals didn’t properly reflect the law.

“The gist of our argument is that the court struck down an entire section of the ordinance dealing with baseless eviction actions on the theory that the ordinance conflicts with a certain state law,” said Deputy City Attorney Adam Radinsky, who is handling the 2-year-old case. “We argued in the petition that the state law does not even apply to the vast majority of cases when the ordinance might be used. Even in the rare situation where it might apply, it is not the kind of state law that can preempt a local ordinance.”

On the other side of the lawsuit is attorney Rosario Perry, an outspoken critic of the city’s harassment ordinance. Perry said City Hall acts like a Mafia boss and strong arms local landlords by threatening to sue them every time a tenant complains.

“The city interferes with the owner’s ability to manage their property and they interfere on groundless reasons,” Perry said Friday. “The city attorney knows nothing about rent control law or landlord-tenant law. They’re basically third graders when it comes to that. All they do is they get the tenant’s complaint, they ignore a good body of housing law, and they send these intimidating letters. Their purpose is just to stop the owners from moving to evict tenants — or moving to control tenants’ behavior.”

Perry added that, like the Mafia, City Hall doesn’t use the courtroom to resolve its disputes, instead relying on threatening letters to prompt compliance. He said prosecutors have sent out 200 to 250 threatening letters, but filed suit only a handful of times.

“Very poor, poor track records,” Perry said. “They’re quick to accuse and they don’t follow through. If the owner stands up to (City Hall) and says, ‘Go to hell’ or if the owner gives in, caves in, they’ve accomplished their purpose.”

Those same numbers are viewed differently by prosecutors, who say the small number of lawsuits proves the system works and tenants are being protected from unruly landlords. Radinsky said City Hall receives about 100 complaints a year under its tenant harassment ordinance, and has pressed charges about 15 times.

Local landlord Doreen Dennis is co-plaintiff in the association’s lawsuit against City Hall, which was tossed out twice in the trial courts before being passed onto the appellate court. 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 at 1024 Maple St. Dennis wanted to evict the tenant so her daughter could move into the four-unit building, Perry added.

The court on Thursday announced it would invite a rebuttal from the association and Dennis. Had it not acted by Thursday, jurisdiction over the case would have been passed onto the California Supreme Court, as with all appeals cases 30 days after a decision is filed, officials said.

In order to keep its tenant harassment law intact, City Hall will have to convince the court the law isn’t unfair to landlords. In its earlier decision, the court ruled the ordinance would “threaten free access to the courts by providing an end run around the limitations on the tort of malicious prosecution.” A tort is a civil offense.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 26, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/062604.pdf?ref=smdp.com)