Pair’s Do-It-Yourself Suit Over Eviction Testifies to Tenacity

In legal terms it’s called pro per, when a person represents himself in court without the wisdom of counsel.

While statistics show such moves usually fizzle before the bench, Ryan Flegal and Konstantine Theoharris are becoming quick-study pros at the pro per game.

Call them a couple of jailhouse lawyers without the jail.

Spending long hours in the law library, the two Santa Monica College students are fighting eviction from a Westside apartment in a case that has taken them to U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

A District Court judge Wednesday granted a temporary restraining order in the case. The two students are due back in court later this month.

Studies show that 98% of pro per litigants in eviction cases end up losers. So what’s motivating these guys?

Easy. They’re either (a) two idealists who want to show the system that you don’t always have to hire some high-priced lawyer to get an ounce of justice or (b) two dogma-minded nudges who are enjoying the spotlight as they waste valuable court time trying to make a petty point.

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The fight revolves around the students’ threatened eviction from a Santa Monica apartment they have shared with a third man for the past year.

The students say they are the victims of zealous neighbors persecuting them for their beliefs. Residents say the pair are noisy and inconsiderate.

Last fall, after months of tension that included dozens of police calls to the five-unit building, Ocean Park Partners, the apartment owners, filed an unlawful detainer against Flegal and Theoharris.

Ryan Flegal is a young man with shoulder-length hair and limitless energy, possessed with a sense of conviction that sometimes turns shrill at age 23. He’s founder and president of the Santa Monica Vegetarian Club and is running for student body president at the college. He likes causes.

A few years back, he rode his bicycle from Los Angeles to Brazil to show that vegetarians aren’t wimps.

Flegal says he has something to show in his court case: that judges and lawyers and people who can afford them too often run an old boy’s network in the courts.

Recently, Flegal founded a vegetarian group that has sponsored regular lectures by community activists and others.

At a recent lecture, Flegal and Theoharris, 26, met John Pellicci, a man with AIDS who later invited the pair to share the apartment where he has lived for many years.

Within weeks, a neighbor, Wayne Bauer was complaining about noise from the apartment. He circulated a petition claiming that the students were filming child pornography and doing human mutilation, offending neighbors. The pair deny the charges.

To Bauer, Flegal and Theoharris are just a pair of loudmouths who make noise late at night and don’t respect the rights of several working-class residents of the building.

“There’s this self-righteous arrogance that fuels what they do,” he said. “My Irish grandfather once said, ‘When you meet the devil, chances are he’ll be smiling.’ ”

In November, Flegal and Theoharris beat their landlord’s unlawful-detainer suit, which charged that they hadn’t paid the rent. They didn’t hire a lawyer, Flegal said, “because lawyers are part of the system. Neither judges nor attorneys know the [eviction] law. They put up a complete facade. Usually, they haven’t even looked at the law. They give their best estimates. Well, we wanted more.”

The day after the decision, the landlord filed another unlawful detainer, this times on grounds of excessive noise.

The pair went back to their law books, but this time they wound up like most pro per defendants, losing a three-day trial in January.

At this point most people move.

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Not Flegal and Theoharris. They filed a motion asking the trial judge to reverse the judgment. They lost. Then they appealed his ruling. They lost that one too.

Out of room in the state court system, they filed their own suit in federal court, naming as defendants the county, two witnesses in their case, two judges and the landlord. They remain in the apartment until the federal judge rules on their appeal.

Edward Lawson, a national civil rights advocate who runs an organization to assist people in representing themselves in court, lauds the pair.

“These are not your typical college students,” said Lawson, who was the subject of a landmark 1983 Supreme Court ruling that individuals have no obligation to carry or produce identification when stopped by police.

Neighbor Bauer, of course, disagrees: “I have never seen the system so blatantly manipulated. This is a straightforward eviction based on nuisance. And these two kids are making a career out of it.”

The lawyer representing the landlord is baffled by their insistence at fighting the eviction.

“They apparently have a lot of time on their hands,” said attorney John Isen. “Anybody can get law books and do their research and write papers and represent themselves. Some do it well and others aren’t able to do it. These two kids do it well.”

The question, says Isen, “is why? What’s so important in staying in an apartment when none of the neighbors want you around?”

Theoharris says the fight isn’t just about the apartment, it’s about The System.

“It’s about knowing your civil rights,” he said. “Even though you have rights, if you don’t know their little rules in court, judges will trample those rights.

“We’re trying to do something about that.”