A Tenant Tempest : Married Couple Claim Reverse Bias; Landlord Calls Their Suit ‘Ludicrous’
When they couldn’t take it anymore, Sheryl Greene and Bernhard Schriebl said they declared war on their landlord.
No, this may not be just another landlord-tenant dispute in a city full of such domestic time bombs.
This could be, as cultural conservatives might say, a lifestyle conflict. One tailor-made for the Balkanized ‘90s, when--judging by the TV talk shows--nearly everyone claims to be isolated and battling for an individual portion of truth and justice.
A long-simmering private feud erupted into official hostilities Oct. 16 when Greene, 36, and Schriebl, 29, filed a novel civil rights suit in Los Angeles Superior Court, charging sexual discrimination by both the owner and manager of the Hollywood apartment building where the two have lived since they were married six years ago.
And that’s the problem, the couple say.
They allege that their heterosexual relationship collided with plans to turn the nondescript 12-unit building on Primrose Lane into an all-gay enclave. In the suit, Greene and Schriebl maintain they have been victims of a sustained campaign of “harassment and intimidation” designed to drive them from their one-bedroom apartment. Chiefly, the suit asserts that the couple has been subjected to discrimination based on marital status and sexual orientation.
Both building owner Charles J. Loven and building manager Kent N. Common deny the allegations.
“Excuse me while I laugh,” said Loven, calling the suit “ludicrous.”
In a brief telephone interview, Loven declined further comment, including answering a question about his sexual orientation. “I can’t comment on anything until I know what the hell’s going on,” he said, explaining that he had not been officially notified of the suit.
For his part, Common said his sexual orientation plays no role in his selection of tenants. “I’m gay,” he said, “but I don’t care who lives here.”
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Until now at least, the law apparently has had little experience in dealing with this kind of reverse discrimination suit. A sampling of fair-housing offices around the city found only two instances of heterosexual tenants complaining of discrimination by gay landlords. Neither has reached litigation, says Diana Bruno, assistant director of the Fair Housing Council for the Hollywood-Mid-L.A. Area.
And Michael Linfield, an ACLU vice president who is privately representing Greene and Schriebl, says he unearthed no similar cases while preparing the suit, although comparable actions might have been settled out of court.
Greene, who mixes animal rescue work with college studies, and Schriebl, a waiter at Chinois on Main, are the only married couple in the apartment building. They say they harbor no prejudices against gays.
“They were living in Hollywood because they wanted to live in a diverse community,” says Linfield. “. . . This is not in any sense an anti-gay case.”
Greene and Schriebl say the campaign against them began almost as soon as Loven bought the building in November, 1988, and Common moved in as manager.
By April, 1989, Common allegedly had told prospective gay tenants that he “intended to turn the apartment building into an all-gay apartment complex and that he would soon be evicting all of the ‘straight’ ” tenants, according to the suit.
In an interview, attorney Linfield explains that he had contacted several current, former and prospective tenants who are prepared to testify to that effect. He declined, however, to release names of potential witnesses.
Taking a scatter-gun approach, Greene and Schriebl also charge illegal intimidation and illegal discrimination on the basis of a physical disability, as well as libel, slander, invasion of privacy, inflicting emotional distress, assault, trespass and false imprisonment. A back injury that Greene sustained while working for a cosmetics company entitles her, she contends, to a curbside handicapped parking space--a particular bone of contention given the building’s narrow hillside street.
Aside from $10,000 in punitive damages on one claim, the suit requests that other financial awards be set by the court.
The suit details a number of episodes that the couple link to the alleged harassment, including a dispute over a rent increase that led to an eviction attempt shortly after the building changed owners. Because of rent control, the couple’s monthly rent is about $530, the lowest in the building, according to both Greene and Common.
Police were called when the couple and Loven engaged in a shouting match over a refrigerator, according to court papers.
Other incidents cited in the suit include vandalism to Greene’s and Schriebl’s cars, theft of their laundry, the posting of notices insulting to Greene and the removal of Valentine cards the couple displayed on the door to their apartment. They discount the possibility of the events being random.
“A lot of this is very dumb,” Greene concedes, adding that she has never actually seen who committed many of the acts.
Another tenant, who said he was heterosexual and asked not to be identified, said he had seen some of the confrontations between the couple and Common.
“It’s actually what I’d call really childish,” said the tenant, who has lived in the building a year and who described his relationships with all involved as cordial.
“I think as far as discrimination on a sexual level, that’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. I just met a lovely married couple looking at one of the apartments last week.”
“All parties,” he concluded, “are what I would call real nice people” who don’t get along with each other.
But another tenant, who also did not want to be identified, sided with Greene and Schriebl, at least in part. “She’s not making this stuff up,” the tenant said, referring specifically to confrontations he saw between Greene and Common. “There’s no question they have unfairly harassed her,” he said. The tenant said, however, that he did not know the source of the conflict.
But Greene and Schriebl clearly consider some events serious. For instance, the suit details the refrigerator argument at length:
After Greene and Schriebl bought a new refrigerator last year, they moved the old refrigerator, which belonged to the building’s owner, into the hallway.
When manager Common saw the appliance in the hall, he “began publicly insulting and humiliating” Greene with a string of sexual epithets, the suit says.
According to the suit, Greene went into her apartment and closed the door because she feared being injured. Next, the suit says, Common began “screaming and banging violently”’ on the door and “then pushed the refrigerator up against the door” of Greene’s apartment.
The tenant who supports Greene and Schriebl said he overheard the clash and was appalled. “There’s been behavior that’s not appropriate for the manager of an apartment building,” the tenant said.
Later, two police officers came and removed the refrigerator.
Common says he recalls the episode but has a different interpretation. He says he asked Greene to move the refrigerator because it had been left in front of another tenant’s door.
A couple of months later an anonymous poster went up in the apartment building. The poster, according to the suit, accused Greene of lying about her physical disability and called her “mentally handicapped.”
In an interview, Greene says she and her husband started looking for another place to live several months ago. They have stayed in the Hollywood apartment this long partly because the price was right, she says. But she adds that they “didn’t want to be chased out of our home.”
