Landlord Appeals Ruling for Tenants : Courts: Lawyer says owner shouldn’t be singled out for crime in the area. Residents were awarded $20,000 after claiming his building became ‘hub of gang activity.’

Activist landlord Eric Crumpton went to Los Angeles Superior Court Thursday to appeal a Small Claims Court award of $20,000 to 10 neighbors of a building he owns in Hollywood.

The landlord’s lawyer told Judge Kathryn Doi Todd that Crumpton’s building is not the area’s “hub of gang activity,” as neighbors allege, and that Crumpton should not be singled out for failing to curb criminal activity that is rife throughout the city.

During a Small Claims Court hearing in February, area residents contended that Crumpton refused to keep track of his tenants and allowed gang members to overrun his property at 1644 Winona Blvd., near Hollywood Boulevard and Normandie Avenue. Eventually, plaintiffs said, the entire neighborhood suffered.

“Gang activity in the area did not start with the Crumptons,” said attorney Robert Weber, who is representing Crumpton and his wife, Joycelyn, also named in the complaint.

Weber said that gangs in Hollywood have been “endemic” since Crumpton bought the 40-unit, brick apartment building in November, 1986. For the last four years, gang activity has shifted from neighborhood to neighborhood, Weber said.

“The (movement) has nothing to do with the property owners in that territory,” Weber said. “If property owners could control criminal activity, all criminals would be homeless.”

The case was the first in Southern California in which neighbors successfully sued a landlord for nuisance and negligence violations. In Berkeley last year, 18 neighbors were awarded a total of $18,000 after filing similar small claims actions against a building owner. In San Francisco, 15 people who took action were awarded $2,000 each.

Members of the Hollywood neighborhood group, Street Peace, who filed the complaint against Crumpton, said they chose the Small Claims Court because it was the quickest and cheapest method.

The plaintiffs alleged that neighbors were doused with liquid poured from windows in the building, and that Crumpton’s tenants flung garbage into neighboring yards or onto the sidewalk and paths lining the building. Crumpton also allegedly balked at paying for seismological remodeling that would bring the apartment into compliance with building safety codes.

Weber said that Crumpton received extensions to complete the remodeling, and that city building inspectors granted him leeway because of a backup on construction orders to retrofit buildings to new earthquake safety standards.

Tom Bell, a neighborhood landlord scheduled to testify for Crumpton, said that the complaint was lodged by neighbors who were venting frustration over a general feeling of lawlessness that has taken over their once-quiet area.

“In that area there are so many problems,” Bell said. “But with the number of calls that the police get, only the most urgent ones can get attention. I think that residents (living near Crumpton’s building) really are getting upset over the lack of response from police.”