Disappearance of Ceiling Leaves Renter Feeling Floored

It sounds like a case for Judge Judy.

The disappearance of the living room ceiling and the fireplace from Joelle Dobrow’s house certainly has all the makings of a riveting episode for the nationally syndicated courtroom television show--a drama that can be seen through the eyes of the landlord, the tenant, the neighbors and the authorities.

Dobrow discovered the damage last week when she returned from work to the Silver Lake duplex where she has lived for 25 years.

Raw timbers were left exposed after the plaster ceiling was stripped away just inside her front door. Daylight showed through the gaping hole in the living room wall where the Spanish-style fireplace had been.

“I was terrified,” said Dobrow, a television production supervisor for the “Judge Judy” show who lives alone in the duplex’s ground-floor unit. “They’d left the place open to both two-legged and four-legged intruders.”

She wasn’t all that surprised, however.

The Redcliff Street duplex was sold last month, and the new owner promptly announced plans to repair termite and earthquake damage to the 70-year-old duplex. At the same time, he evicted Dobrow--ordering her out by July 27.

Dobrow said she asked her new landlord to wait on the repairs until after she moved out. But he said that wouldn’t be possible and gave a key to her unit to workers.

When the crew showed up in the living room, Dobrow piled furniture in the doorway to her dining room in hopes of keeping the strangers out of the rest of her house.

But despite attempts to cover couches and computer equipment and seal off the living room with sheets of plastic, her belongings were soon coated with dust and plaster.

And when she called a moving and storage company in hopes of expediting her departure, movers warned that they might not be able to use the front door because of the construction work. They refused to use the back door because rear steps to the duplex are too rickety, Dobrow said.

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Landlord Kirk Gerou acknowledges he is a novice at evictions and renovations. But he says he is doing both by the book on Redcliff Street.

A first-time rental property owner, Gerou is head of public relations for Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills. He lives about a mile from the duplex in a large Silver Lake residence he co-owns with a television news anchor.

But that relationship is ending and Gerou needs somewhere to go, he said. So he plans to move into Dobrow’s first-floor unit and rent out the upstairs part.

“I had no idea it would get to this,” he said. “But I need a place to live.”

Gerou said the repairs were necessary to make the duplex habitable. The old fireplace was nonfunctional and the living room ceiling had to be ripped down so that rotting beams connected to the upper unit’s entryway balcony can be removed.

The tenant is exaggerating the inconvenience, according to the landlord.

The renovation “does not render your unit uninhabitable as the work will affect the partial use of one room, the living room,” Gerou wrote her June 27. “Said work will not inhibit your use of the dining room, kitchen, breakfast nook, laundry room, bedroom No. 1 or bedroom No. 2 or your bathroom.”

In the letter, Gerou offered to delay his “capital improvements project” until Dobrow moved out if she would agree to pay him $995--the amount of August rent “I would otherwise be entitled to, but unable to collect” for the upstairs unit.

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Last weekend, Dobrow hired a handyman for $25 to nail a piece of plywood over the gaping hole in her living room wall.

Her neighbors say they’ve never seen anything like it on Redcliff Street.

“Nobody deserves this kind of treatment,” said Bill Phipps, a retired aerospace worker who has lived there 41 years.

“Knocking out a wall and saying she can’t do anything about it. Leaving the place open to anyone who might want to come in, day or night. If she was my daughter, I’d be down there raising hell with the Police Department and everybody else.”

In fact, Dobrow called the police. Silver Lake’s senior lead officer, George Caulford, investigated and decided no crime was committed--but that what was happening to Dobrow was criminal.

“Her personal belongings were at the mercy of a number of construction people. Her safety was put in peril by the wall being removed and not boarded,” Caulford said. The duplex renovations are “nonemergency repairs” that could have waited until Dobrow left, he said.

Caulford said Gerou waved him off, describing the dispute as a civil, not criminal, matter. Gerou agrees: “I called him and said he was out of line. I said, ‘Are you representing her?’ ”

Antonio Ortiz, a spokesman for the city’s Housing Department, said Gerou is not violating any law by evicting Dobrow or by starting renovations to her duplex, which is covered by rent control.

The situation she is in “is one of the things that has fallen through the cracks” of Los Angeles’ rent stabilization law, he said. But Dobrow might be entitled for a rent rebate from Gerou “for whatever part of her unit that she wasn’t able to use,” Ortiz added.

“She might try civil court.”

Maybe it is a case for Judge Judy--who in real life is tough-as-nails New York Judge Judy Sheindlin when she isn’t starring in the small claims court TV show that Dobrow works on.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Dobrow said with a shrug the other day as she took a break from packing her belongings. “That might be a conflict of interest.”

Then maybe it’s a case for Judge Wapner.