Apartment Dwellers Awarded $224,000 : Rent strike: A jury decides on the judgment after present and former tenants of two run-down apartment buildings in Santa Ana tell of floors collapsing and of beating and drowning rats.
Nine current and former tenants of two dilapidated apartment buildings won a total of about $224,000 Monday when a jury decided that they had endured vermin, bad plumbing and other unsafe conditions for too long.
The Municipal Court jury’s award to the two women and seven men capped a three-week trial that featured graphic descriptions of the conditions at 605 and 607 E. Washington Ave. in buildings owned by James B. Isbill.
Witnesses told of a rotted front stairway, leaky ceilings and cockroaches that posed health and safety hazards to tenants. Several tenants told how they beat or drowned rats in their apartments to get rid of the creatures. One tenant said he had to prop up his bathroom ceiling because his upstairs neighbor’s bathtub had begun to fall through the water-soaked bathroom floor.
Matilde Herrera won the most of any plaintiff: $16,000 in compensatory damages and $34,000 in punitive damages. A psychologist testified that she suffered from extreme depression from contending with the conditions in her apartment.
Jurors found, however, that the tenants themselves bore a small share of the blame for the conditions in their units, so the damages awarded to the plaintiffs will be reduced, their attorney, Stuart M. Parker, said. In addition, because damages in Municipal Court are limited to $25,000 per person, several plaintiffs who won more than that will have to give up anything over that amount, Parker said.
The nine tenants were part of a rent-strike movement that mushroomed among people living in rental housing in Garden Grove and Santa Ana in 1985. At the peak of the strike, about 500 tenants refused to pay rent to their landlords until repairs were made. They paid the money into trust accounts instead.
The standoff provoked a flurry of lawsuits. Some have been settled, Parker said, and some have gone to trial. Still others are pending. Parker said Monday’s verdict is one of the largest he knows of in rent-strike cases.
Several landlords, including Isbill, filed suit in federal court in 1987 against the Legal Aid Society of Orange County and other agencies who aided the rent strikers, alleging a conspiracy to deprive the landlords of their rights. That suit was dropped, and the landlords were fined $15,000 for filing it. But a similar suit by the landlords is still pending in Superior Court.
Isbill’s attorney, Nick O’Malley, said he will ask for a new trial. He contended at trial that the tenants breached their agreement to maintain their units in good condition and that they made it difficult for the landlord to come onto the property to make repairs.
O’Malley also argued that Isbill wanted to demolish the buildings but could not proceed because of the rent strike. Once the strike began, O’Malley said, Isbill could not make repairs to the building without the rent money.
