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By Lookout Staff
August 6 -- Landlords
who file baseless evictions
against tenants are immune from
liability unless they don’t
intend to pursue litigation,
the California Supreme Court
ruled last week.
However, the long-awaited ruling
in the 2002 case filed by a
local landlord organization
against the City of Santa Monica
does restore a tenant’s
right to sue over a bad faith
eviction notice, the court ruled
Thursday.
Filed by the Action Apartment
Association, the lawsuit challenged
a 1995 ordinance that tightened
tenant protections shortly after
the State passed legislation
allowing landlords to charge
market rates for vacated rent-controlled
units.
The 5 to 2 ruling held that
under the State’s “litigation
privilege” landlords are
immune from liability when they
actually file eviction lawsuits
against tenants, even if there
is no basis for the eviction.
The Santa Monica ordinance,
Justice Carlos Moreno wrote
in the ruling, “would
cut against the litigation privilege’s
‘core policy’ of
protecting access to the courts.”
By allowing the City or a private
party to sue, even if the landlord
was successful in the underlying
action, the law would “have
a chilling effect on landlords
pursuing evictions through the
courts,” Moreno wrote.
But the court -- which heard
oral arguments on June 6 --
also unanimously agreed that
the City could sanction bad
faith pre-litigation tactics,
including serving an eviction
notice for an improper purpose
and with no intent to actually
sue.
The City can enforce the section
of the ordinance that makes
it illegal to serve “any
notice to quit or other eviction
notice. . . based upon facts
which the landlord has no reasonable
cause to believe to be true
or upon a legal theory which
is untenable under the facts
known to the landlord,”
Moreno wrote.
The litigation privilege protects
communications before a lawsuit
is filed only when litigation
“is contemplated in good
faith and under serious consideration,”
Moreno wrote.
Passed by the City council
12 years ago, the local law
bars landlords from maliciously
interrupting services, failing
to perform timely repairs, abusing
the right to enter a tenant’s
unit and threatening or verbally
abusing tenants.
The law also bars landlords
from taking action to terminate
a tenancy “based upon
facts which the landlord has
no reasonable cause to believe
to be true or upon a legal theory
which is untenable under the
facts known to the landlord.”
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