Landlord Settles 1st in Series of Bitter Suits : Rental war: A tenant who was the lead plaintiff in a raft of litigation against a Santa Ana apartments owner was awarded $19,000 on allegations that the property was substandard.

After five years of legal wrangling, landlord Carmine Esposito agreed Monday to pay more than $19,000 in damages to the first of 75 tenants who have sued him on allegations that they were forced to live in rodent-infested, squalid conditions at his apartments.

The out-of-court settlement reached between the embattled Esposito and tenant Mario Gonzalez, 64, could signal the beginning of the end to one of the most bitter and highly publicized landlord-tenant disputes in Orange County, attorneys for both sides said.

“The settlement is absolutely fair because it gives the tenant some decent money and doesn’t devastate him (Esposito) financially,” said attorney Stuart Parker, who, along with Orange County Legal Aid attorney Crystal Sims, represented Gonzalez.

Esposito, who continues to deny allegations that he maintained substandard units at his apartments in the 1200 block of West Brook Street in Santa Ana, said he believed it would be too costly to go to trial.

“Financially, it was better to settle,” Esposito said outside the courtroom. “It could have cost as much as $40,000 to $50,000 to try one case.”

Gonzalez, at home in his two-bedroom apartment on West Brook Street, said he is relieved to finally be done with a case that began with a handful of angry tenants going to a local Catholic Church because they were frustrated with run-down conditions at the complex. The case took them through hours of court procedures that many of them, natives of Mexico, did not fully understand. But they comprehend that they have scored a major victory, Gonzalez said.

“After five years of this, one can get very tired,” he said as workmen hung new drapes in his two-bedroom apartment. “But you have to suffer to gain something. I only wish he would do this for everyone.”

Monday’s settlements mark the second time in recent weeks that landlords have resolved their legal battles with tenants. On June 22, landlords of the Aloha Palms Park in Costa Mesa agreed to pay $230,000 to 60 current and former tenants to resolve a three-year battle over deteriorating conditions at the mobile home park.

Gonzalez was the lead plaintiff in a long string of civil suits against Esposito. Just hours after the Gonzalez settlement was reached, Esposito’s attorneys, Bruce Carr and Margaret Thurn, settled with former tenants Rachel and Emeterio Ochoa for an undisclosed sum.

The three were among the original group

of 70 tenants who staged rent strikes and picketing, contending that cockroaches crawled through their apartments, holes in the walls went unpatched and corroded plumbing leaked water on floors and carpeting. Besides the initial advice from a Catholic priest, the tenants were aided in their struggle by several nonprofit groups, particularly Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, an immigrant rights group based in Santa Ana.

Officials cited Esposito for health and safety code violations in the buildings that he owned in Garden Grove and Santa Ana and ordered him to correct exposed wiring and inoperative plumbing and rodent and pest infestations.

In 1985, Esposito paid $70,000 to the city of Santa Ana in exchange for dismissal of one of the most extensive criminal cases in the county against a landlord on charges of renting substandard housing units.

That same year lawsuits were filed against Esposito on behalf of the 70 tenants, most of whom are represented by an attorney from the Hermandad Mexicana Nacional Legal Center.

Monday’s settlement came just before Gonzalez’s attorney was scheduled to finish his opening statement during the second day of trial.

Esposito, 61, of Anaheim insists that he has made extensive repairs on his properties and that his tenants are living under “decent” conditions. Many of the tenants themselves, he said, are to blame for the problems that have plagued his buildings. He said that as soon as the buildings are repaired, new holes appear in the walls, and he charged that many tenants refused to allow exterminators to come in and rid the apartments of rodents and cockroaches.

But Gonzalez, who worked as a janitor and security guard up until recently, said that Esposito did not make even the most minimal repairs.

He walked around his apartment, pointing out the repairs that workers had initiated only last Wednesday, the day after the case first went to trial. In his bedroom, workers had plastered over holes and water stains caused by plumbing leaks from an adjoining bathroom. New carpet has been laid throughout the apartment.

“Some days, I would get up in the morning, and when I put my feet on the floor, they were standing in water,” Gonzalez said. “The carpet was stinking and rotted from the moisture. My throat would hurt from stepping in it.”

There are still signs of rotting plaster in the ceiling.

Rats and cockroaches had infested the apartment to such an extent, he said, that he and two sons who live with him would sometimes find the pests in food that had been left out for a short time. Work crews have sprayed for bugs recently, Gonzalez said, but even as he spoke, a roach scampered on the wall behind the stove.

Windows have never been secure to keep intruders out, and once the family was burglarized. Another time, he said, children accidently dropped a tire they had been playing with at the top of a stairwell in front of the apartment. The tire broke through Gonzalez’s flimsy front door and crashed into a wall.

“It took them almost a year to repair that,” he said.