Small Claims Court may offer relief from those noisy upstairs neighbors
Question: I live in Santa Monica and need a recommendation for an attorney to deal with noise from my upstairs neighbors. They use their treadmill excessively -- about two hours a day -- and make noise into the wee hours of the morning. We already have been to mediation about the problem, and they are flagrantly disregarding all the recommendations from the mediator. Can you help?
Answer: I can try, but I don’t think that getting an attorney is the best approach for you to take in this situation. Apparently, negotiating with the neighbors didn’t work and the owner is unable or unwilling to get involved or, as a last resort, to hand these noisy tenants their walking papers in the form of an eviction. Since the only people who can evict tenants are the owners or their representatives, an attorney you hire will not be able to do that, if that’s your intention.
If you intend to sue the tenants for damages as the result of the excessive noise, you can accomplish that in Small Claims Court without an attorney. In California you may sue for up to $5,000 in damages in Small Claims Court. Thereafter, if you win your case and the noise continues, you can always re-sue the noisy tenants in Small Claims Court.
Tenant left in cold by broken fridge
Question: My refrigerator is included with the Los Angeles apartment I rent. It died last week and all of the food in it spoiled. I informed the landlord but it still has not been fixed. Can I request a discount on the next month’s rent for the time I was without a major appliance? Can I ask for a credit for the spoiled food?
Answer: Unless the landlord could have foreseen and prevented the refrigerator from dying and the food from spoiling, you are not entitled to any type of a rent credit for the contents.
As for the refrigerator being out of order for a week, you may be entitled to a rent credit, but you may not want to pursue it.
Housing providers are not required to provide their customers with major appliances in addition to the housing they supply. They are required to supply tenants with heat, but if an apartment owner doesn’t want to continue providing a major appliance to a renter, he doesn’t have to.
Even under rent control, an apartment owner can diminish a service, such as providing a renter with a refrigerator, as long as he or she reduces the rent to compensate for the reduction in service.
Even assuming that the monthly value of having a refrigerator is, for instance, $50; a credit for one week without it is only $12.50, which is not a lot of money.
Tenant may sue to recover deposit
Question: I moved out of my apartment fully expecting to get all of my security deposit back. There was no damage and the apartment was immaculate. The manager said she would tell the owner to refund the deposit fully. When I didn’t get the deposit back after a few weeks, I went by the apartment and found a new manager who did not know anything about the deposit and would not give me the owner’s name, address or phone number so that I could contact him.
It is now three months later, and I still have no refund. Do I have any recourse, and how do I go about getting my deposit back?
Answer: You can sue the owner in Small Claims Court. Since you don’t have the owner’s information, you will have to sue his representative, who, in this case, is the apartment manager. If you let the manager know your intentions before filing the paperwork with the court, you might find that the manager will be more cooperative. If not, file against the manager.
If the court finds the owner is withholding your security deposit in bad faith, it can award penalties of up to twice the amount of the security deposit plus actual damages.
Kevin Postema is the editor of Apartment Age magazine, a publication of the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles. Questions be sent to AptlifeAAGLA@aol.com, c/o Kevin Postema, or AAGLA, c/o Kevin Postema, 621 S. Westmoreland Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90005.
