Oakland, California: Eviction Pre-Trial Settlement Questions

[Doug Huggala]

Hey there,

Background

I'm a first time landlord. I have a tenant in a rent controlled unit who I tried working with for several months but unfortunately stopped paying rent. We served a 3-day notice and a summons, which they answered. They are claiming the unit is "uninhabitable" (The unit was recently re-modeled, inspected and appraised within the last 12 months!) and that they stopped paying rent because of that. They never gave us any notice that they had any issues with the unit prior to the answer to summons. They have free lawyers from the  East Bay Community Law Center.

Question
We have our pre-trial settlement conference tomorrow. What should I expect? How likely are we to actually go to the jury trial they have requested? As far as I'm concerned, they have no case. Our lawyers seem to think that it doesn't matter that they don't have a case; a jury will be sympathetic to them as tenants and wants us to find some sort of settlement that allows them to stay on a stipulation or to give them anywhere from $5k and four to five months rent free before vacating. This seems like legalized extortion to me.

I'd love to hear any feedback from anyone who has gone through this before.

[Arlen Chou]

@Doug Huggala been there done that 3 times in Oakland within the past few years.  I won't go into the details of my issues but I have dealt with EBCLC and their play book is pretty open.  The Alameda system is really set up to force people to negotiate.  They stack their calendar so you could burn a ton of time each time you go.  The settlement conference is the very first step.  You basically show up and burn time.  Since your post came out yesterday, I assume you have already gone through this and hopefully settled.  But in case you have not, you could push on the 90 days and drive that down to 30 or 60 days.  

What you have to understand is that your tenant probably does not have any money or assets for you to go after, so dragging this thing out could be a waste of time.  You could fight this and potentially win, but you will go through at least 2 more days where you are sitting at the Alameda County Court house in Hayward to basically get an actual trail date.

In my case I was fighting for 6 digits of $ so it made sense to fight it.  But if you are fighting for a few thousand dollars, it might be better to negotiate the date they vacate. I would push for the mutual waiver.  Typically it is also in the best interest for East Bay Community Law Center to negotiate a quick conclusion.  They usually roll in with a dozen or 2 dozen cases on the docket that they have to handle with a handful of lawyers. They have to process these things like Big Macs and they don't want to take this to actual court unless they have a strong case.

Explain to your attorney that you don't want any loose ends once this is complete.  Therefore, you need the waiver.  Push them for a faster move out, EBCLC should also be anticipating this and they will probably push their client in good faith to settle.

Yes it sucks and it is wrong, but your focus should be to move forward as fast as possible. I am personally looking forward to December 1st, when my last problem tenant will have moved out of Oakland!

Good luck to you!

-Arlen