Bitter Landlord-Renter Dispute Goes to Trial : Law: Tenants of Santa Ana apartment complex say they lived in a ‘pit of squalor.’ Owner says repairs were made but trashed by residents.

Tenants in a run-down apartment complex lived in a “pit of squalor” for years, and repairs by their landlord were too little too late, a tenants’ lawyer said Tuesday during opening statements in Municipal Court in the county’s longest and most bitter landlord/renter dispute.

After seven years of out-of-court grappling, which included the county’s longest rent strike, Carmine Esposito and 68 tenants of his Santa Ana apartments heard their attorneys give dramatically conflicting views about who is responsible for the conditions at his six apartment buildings.

Attorney Stuart M. Parker accused landlord Esposito, 53, of Anaheim, of operating his properties on West Brook Street in Santa Ana for mere profit at the expense of the safety and well-being of the residents.

Esposito’s attorneys, however, contended that since 1985, the landlord has attempted to fix problems in the buildings, which are next to one another, only to have the tenants repeatedly trash the repairs.

“I guess our case is: broken, replaced, repaired; broken, replaced, repaired. That’s our case,” attorney James R. Wakefield told jurors.

The tenants are claiming emotional and physical distress and are asking for compensatory and punitive damages. Esposito is also asking for damages, alleging that the tenants wrongly carried out the strike, which lasted from 1985 to 1990, and should pay back rent from the past seven years. The trial is expected to last six weeks.

The dispute dates from February, 1985, when a string of civil suits and countersuits were filed between the tenants and Esposito.

The tenants’ series of civil suits--naming Esposito and his wife, Mirian--claimed that apartment units were uninhabitable because of continuous infestation of roaches and rodents, exposed wiring, faulty plumbing, electrical fixtures and appliances, and other substandard conditions. After the filing of the suits, the tenants initiated the first organized rent strike in the county.

Esposito countersued, saying the rent rebellion was illegal and asked the court to evict the rent strikers.

Subsequently, the tenants won the right to stay in the apartments but were ordered to pay reduced rents to a court-appointed receiver who would then distribute the money to Esposito to make repairs on the buildings.

On Tuesday, Esposito’s attorneys argued that since 1985, the embattled landlord had spent more than $500,000 to renovate the 52 units in the six apartment buildings. Furthermore, the attorneys said, despite the court order, the tenants did not pay any rent to the receiver in 1985.

And, Wakefield added, while Esposito paid for new bathrooms, new walls, new electrical units and other repairs, “for some reason, things keep going wrong in those apartments . . . and the tenants will tell you they don’t know what happened.”

As for the infestation, Wakefield said, in 1985, when Esposito tried to remedy the problem, tenants “refused to let fumigators into their apartments.”

Tenant attorney Parker contended that the tenants had been living in “a pit of squalor that endangered” their health since 1980, when Esposito bought the properties. And it wasn’t until 1985, when the city cited Esposito, that he tried to fix the units, Parker claimed.

And, “although there have been some improvements,” Parker said, “it’s still far less than satisfying.”