‘I figure, he keeps rats in the apartment, I keep rats in the apartment.’

The usual crush of people who have business in the prefab complex of Van Nuys Municipal Court had long since dispersed one evening last week when the Apartment Assn. of San Fernando Valley and Ventura County assembled in Division 114 to hold a trial of its own.

The association rented the courtroom Wednesday night for its regular meeting. This month’s topic was eviction.

The mere mention of that word is often enough to turn an otherwise friendly income property owner into a kind of Rambo of Walter Mittys who could imagine himself wiping out the judge, the marshal and maybe the whole Legislature as easily as putting up another day with a lousy tenant.

So, to keep its show lighthearted as well as entertaining, the association decided to give it in the form of a drama. It threw together a troupe of amateur actors to play the parts of landlord and tenant in mock litigation.

The judge was real. John Hunter, who sits on the Ventura County Municipal Court, drove out for the evening. Hunter, a tall, bouncy man with short, blond hair and boyish good looks, arrived with his own black robe slung over his brief case.

When he stepped out of the judge’s chambers wearing it shortly after 7 p.m., the scene was a lot like the real eviction courtroom in downtown Los Angeles--crowded. Association members had filled all the spectator seats and all the jury seats. Stragglers stood or knelt in the aisles.

A program promised the case of Offielia Owner vs. Roger Resident. Unfortunately, an officer of the association said, Offielia didn’t show up for dress rehearsal, so a fellow named Owen was drafted to stand in.

He was the association’s president, Michael Katz, in real life a lawyer whose entire practice is based on evicting people. He calls his law firm the McDonald’s of evictions.

Katz played a callous and bumbling owner of a six-unit apartment building in Van Nuys. He was trying to evict William Mac Miller, actually a member of the association’s board of directors.

Owen said Roger hadn’t paid his rent since February and had taken in an unauthorized occupant in violation of his rental agreement.

Hunter quickly learned that Owen had botched the service of his eviction notice by leaving it in the apartment when no one was there.

Owen also admitted that he had raised the rent from $200 a month to $600 in the middle of a one-year lease.

“I wanted him to move,” he explained with a smirk.

“Anything else the court needs to know?” Hunter asked.

“He’s got pets in there, too, your honor,” Owen said. “He’s breeding white rats, your honor. Training them.”

Owen’s case was so obviously flawed that the audience had no difficulty seeing that even the real Katz couldn’t win it. For the sake of argument, however, the judge allowed Roger Resident to speak on a couple of secondary charges, such as the rats.

“I figure, he keeps rats in the apartment, I keep rats in the apartment,” the resident said. “The only difference is his are black, mine are white.”

That raised a laugh. But it also opened the dreaded question of habitability.

“Rats running amok cause problems with use and enjoyment and perhaps health and safety,” Hunter told the audience. “So then the judge has to say, ‘If the rent is $200 a month, what percent of that should be deducted for every month where the habitability condition exists?’ ”

In this case, he said, there would be no adjustment because the tenant continued to pay the rent “even though the rats were running around.”

Again for the sake of argument, Hunter assumed that the rats were the issue.

“Then I have to offset the rent by some magic figure,” he said. “This is very fun. I’ll get 20 judges and give them the rat problem like this and say, ‘What percent would you offset?’ It’s amazing. You’ll get from maybe 10% to 50% offset for the monthly rent for rats. It depends on how people live, what’s expected.”

In Ventura County, rats apparently don’t arouse that much concern.

“If I were offsetting for rats, I’d give a very minimal offset. I usually tell people they don’t eat much. I wouldn’t offset very much. Maybe 1%, 2%, 10%--something like that.”

A second case centered on a security deposit, which a tenant wanted back after leaving her apartment. The owner said he had spent most of it cleaning up the apartment.

The audience had a tough time figuring it out. So did the judge because, he said, it hinged on a purely human interpretation. The tenant said the apartment was clean when she left. The owner called it “a horror.”

Without corroborating evidence--such as photographs--that can be a tough decision, he said.

But even good evidence wouldn’t necessarily solve the problem, he said. He offered the example of dirty windows. In Ventura County, Hunter said, the judges once polled themselves on whether a landlord can charge a former tenant for cleaning windows or whether that comes under “normal wear and tear.”

“You know what?” he said. “We were divided exactly down the middle.”

So, in one venue at least, a rat is no big deal, but a dirty window can throw a whole bench into disarray.

What is an owner to think?