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# Landlord prevails in court
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/landlord-prevails-in-court/
- Published: 2002-07-17T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T00:31:35.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Real Estate & Housing, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*Jurors believe tenants created distrust at apartment complex*

*By DAVE DANFORTH Daily Press Staff Writer*

An unusually hard-fought Santa Monica eviction case ended Tuesday when a jury decided against what one of the jurors called “the tenants from hell.”

It took less than two hours for 12 Santa Monica Superior Court jurors to decide landlord Abbas “Joe” Joukar could evict Jill Shively and Bob Kirby from the rent-controlled apartment Shively had occupied for 16 years at 20th Street and California Avenue. Though the verdict required agreement among only nine jurors, it was unanimous. Said one juror to their attorney, Matthew Schwartz, “you did-n’t have a winning hand in my book.”

The jurors decided that Shively and Kirby were responsible for stolen mail and $150 in missing cash, and that they had created an atmosphere of distrust and fear at their eight-unit complex. One juror said she was swung by the couple’s several video cameras, calling them “an invasion of privacy.”

Observers said the verdict, in a rent-control town like Santa Monica, was something of a surprise. Juries often need to be talked out of a natural sympathy for tenants, who appear to have Judge awards city $30K from Boathouse case more to lose than landlords. Schwartz professed surprise at the verdict, which he said Shively would appeal.

Rosario Perry and Kristi Gasaway, who defended the case for landlord Joukar, said they were relieved. Had Joukar lost the case, Perry feared they would “have been in litigation for years” with a malicious prosecution case.

There is little doubt the decision, if it stands, will be tough on Shively, 41\. A paralegal, she now faces having to move out of a place her daughter, 13, has called home all her life. The modest one-bedroom apartment cost only $670 per month under rent control; the jury decided it could be leased now for $1,200 a month.

The jurors said they quickly decided that they believed little of what Shively and Kirby said. They also became sympathetic to landlord Joukar, an Iranian immigrant with limited education who made good in the U.S. and appeared to care deeply about his tenants. One juror, a physician from UCLA, said she noted Joukar appeared near tears after his cross examination by Schwartz.

“The more you impeached him, the more we believed him,” another juror told the defense lawyer after the verdict.

Indeed, the jury faulted Schwartz for his abrasive performance. They uniformly agreed that he had been needlessly noisy in closing argument and discourteous to those he was cross examining. One juror noted particular distress at Schwartz ridiculing a neighboring tenant, Michael Edwards, over Edwards’ low income as an aspiring actor. And, the jurors found fault with Schwartz’s sniping comments about witnesses after he’d failed to take up his complaints directly with those witnesses on cross examination. They also wondered why, in a case over tenant complaints about an apartment’s habitability, the tenants failed to bring photos of the supposedly run-down condition of the place.

Perry, a Santa Monica lawyer who is a familiar sight around the courthouse, said a turning point in the case came when Shively presented a lease which appeared to be a forgery. The lease, which allowed for attorney’s fees in a case such as this, was a fake, the jury decided. One juror said that at the end of the landlord’s case, jurors were expecting a vigorous defense from the tenants, who were alleging a campaign of intimidation, retaliation and harassment. But, one juror said, the case never materialized.

The trial appeared to be at the outset a quintessential case of a rent-control eviction battle in Santa Monica bound for epic proportions. The landlord files to evict the tenants on grounds of “substantial interference” with the “comfort, safety and enjoyment” of the complex by other residents. The tenants strike back, claiming the eviction is intended to allow the landlord a sudden rent increase, and comes in retaliation for their complaints about the deplorable condition of the unit and demands that it be fixed.

But in this case, Joukar brought with him two other tenants at the same complex to say that Kirby had so spooked them that they planned to return to New Hampshire until Kirby and Shively are gone.

Those tenants, aspiring actor Edwards and his girlfriend Christina Signorello, a pre-school teacher, made a case against Kirby in particular. Kirby had moved into Shively’s apartment only last April, protected by a prohibition on raising the rent on domestic partners.

On June 1, things took a turn for the worse, when Edwards and Signorello began to suspect that Kirby and Shively had stolen a card with $150 cash in it intended as a reward for Edwards reuniting a lost cat, George, with its owner.

The owner, Amber Williamson, said she had taken the card to the complex and had given it to Shively, asking that it get to Edwards and Signorello. Signorello later said Kirby told her Shively had gone out to spend the cash. Kirby, a part-time geology professor, then went out of his way to intimidate them, they testified.

Judge Diana Wheatley instructed the jurors that if they decided Kirby and Shively stole the cash and that the theft created an inhospitable living condition, they could return a verdict for landlord Joukar.

The jury turned into an unusually close-knit unit. After only a three-day trial last week, most had already bonded, particularly during breaks for lawyer conferences when Judge Wheatley told them they could converse, but not about the case. Wheatley also permitted the jury to take the day off Monday in deference to one juror who had an urgent work appointment.

On Friday, the jurors showed up all decked out in Hawaiian Luau shirts, and posed for a group photo in the afternoon. On Tuesday, in deference to Judge Wheatley and her robe, they decided to dress entirely in black. But the judge had herself decided to don a blue Hawaiian shirt after the verdict was delivered. She invited them to an unusual and informal meeting with her to discuss their experiences at the trial.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 17, 2002.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/071702.pdf?ref=smdp.com)