CitiApartments

Here in San Francisco, one of the largest owners of apartment buildings is outfit that goes by various names, though all appear to be owned by the same entity: Skyline Realty. Working as a tenant's attorney for the past couple of years, I've heard them associated with some unsavory practices when it comes to evictions. However, it appears that today, Skyline finally pushed their tenants too far.

According to this story in the San Francisco Chronicle, Skyline Realty, its subsidiary CitiApartments, and one of its employees has been sued by 23 of its tenants alleging that Skyline uses intimidation, including armed men, to force tenants to give up their leases. The suit alleges that when Skyline, which is alleged to be merely an alter ego of the Lembi family, buys a new building it conducts sweeps to eliminate tenants that do not fit its "profile".

If it turns out to be true, this will be a huge case. If you want to read the complaint, it is here on the San Francisco Superior Court's website (or go to sftc.org and look for case CGC-06-451694).

Treble damages for unlawful evictions are a good thing.

Be Careful What You Blog

District Attorney offices apepar to have programs where they allow firms to provide them with temporary attorneys. I know that the Marin County DA does this with one of the bigger firms in San Francisco, but apparently the San Francisco DA does this as well.

Unfortunately, sometimes, this ends up putting the attorney who switches over to criminal law in some trouble. And sometimes, the lawyer does it all to himself. Skelly Wright, over at Arbitrary and Capricious, is a public defender who has been keeping tabs on one of these lawyers in particular.

Apparenly, Kuo blogged his case on his website (apparently down at this time). Unfortunately, as part of the recap of the days events, he made a number of less than advisable comments about the jury, the opposing counsel and the judge. And apparently the judge reads law blogs.

Incidentally, his name is not up on the firm site where he works (or is it worked?). So beware what you blog I suppose.

Either this kid is amazing...

Or this ex-teacher is really sick. Once again Pamela Rogers is back in custody. After completing the custodial part of her plea agreement, Ms. Rogers decided that she needed to have some fun.

So what did she do? She tried to contact the "victim" whom she previously had sex with. Her method of contacting him was apparently to create sexually explicit videos of herself and send them to him.

So now she is awaiting a probation hearing where the DA has announced he would seek to have her sent away for her full sentence: 7 years.

What is this woman thinking?

I Cannot Believe I Am Saying This

I am a renter. I am also an attorney who does a fair bit of work (most of it pro bono) for people in danger of being evicted. So, when I hear a new anti-eviction measure is in the works, my ears prick up.

For what I'm about to write, I am probably going to get pounded on by the other tenant's rights lawyers and tenants' activists.

That said, apparently the Board of Supervisors in the city has decided to try and kill three birds with one stone. The three birds being: the decreasing quantity of affordable rental housing in the city, the rate of condo conversions and the surge of evictions to create the right climate for condo conversions.

In case you don't know, here in San Francisco, in order for a building to go condo, it must be go through lottery process. Many would be conversions languish there for years as they wait for their number to get called. I'm not going to go into the process, but while its not permanent purgatory it can seem like that to the people who are on the list for the second and third times.

Anyways, apparently under the proposed new law if a building has a history of two or more evictions, then it is barred from the condo conversion lottery. Apparently, the wording of the proposed ordinance covers any buildings going back as far as 1999. Potentially, this means that a building that has changed hands, and is otherwise legitimately ready to enter the lottery, could be barred from the lottery because of the actions of a prior owner.

To my mind, this seems a little too draconian. The objective is good: prevent people from being evicted solely to clear the way for condo conversion. The problem is there are probably a number of building owners, especially in the two and three unit buildings in the avenues where there has been an eviction prior to the sale of the building. Once the new owners get around to converting, they are going to find a nasty little surprise for something that they did not do. Yes, they would benefit from it, but I'm not sure that this is an equitable solution.

On the other hand, two strike rule might be cutting the baby. However, in reading the proposed ordinance, I find it interesting that they do not mention unlawful evictions. Why only penalize what may be good faith evictions (say the tenant has refused to pay rent, or better, the tenant has burned down part of the unit)? I would think that if the landlord had committed an unlawful eviction or a forcible detainer, then they should get a ban from the condominium lottery.

Then there is another thing that this proposed law could run afoul of, namely takings issues. I am not an expert on this, but I predict someone, if this was to be signed by the Mayor, would challenge it on those grounds.

I think something is needed to slow the condo conversions in the city that are powered by evictions to clear the buildings. However, I do not think that this law goes far enough. The law I would like to see would include: penalties for unlawful evictions and forcible detainers; no entry into the lottery for five years if there is a history of evictions for good cause for five years; and no entry to the lottery for ten years if the evictions were of a protected person (in San Francisco that means some one over 60 who has resided in the unit for ten years, or is disabled and living in the unit for ten years or more or catastrophically ill and living in the unit for 10 years).

Not that the Board of Supervisors or Mayor Newsome is going to listen to me. But that is my idea. Everyone gets something.

Will Someone Please Explain To Me the Insurance Industry Like I'm a 5-year old?

Because I really, really do not understand them.

First, a few weeks ago, the insurance industry's profits were tallied against their losses by the L.A. Times. The conclusion of this research? The Insurance Industry had its most profitable year in a long time. Their profits, even taking into account the nasty natural disasters (which they have tried to avoid paying out on), went up 18.7%.

What does 18.7% translate to, you may ask? Well, according to the same article the insurance companies made a collective profit of about $44.8 billion (yes that is with a "b"). That is after all the payouts from claims last year. In addition to the profit, their surplus went up 7% to $427 billion.

However, despite all the billions of dollars in profits, the insurance companies spokesman downplayed these profits. They stated,

"We're not being good stewards of our investors' capital or our
policyholders' surplus if we keep doing business where we can't make
money."

Imagine that. Turning a profit and providing a service that society needs (albeing providing the service part grudingly) is apparently not enough. Apparently record breaking profits is not making money these days. This then begs the question, at what point are the insurance companies being "good stewards of [their] investors' capital"?

So as promised, today it was reported that many insurance providers are cancelling coverage for hurricanes in states from Texas to Florida and up the Atlantic coast to New York. Apparently AIG is taking it a step further.

Somehow, I'm sure, the insurance companies will start blaming the lawyers for this.

Coward of the Weekend

It was a tough call on this one, but I decided that the idiot award of the weekend should go to the umpiring crew at the Giants-Rockies game. However, Mr. Mesa showed what a true coward he was by throwing at the head of Omar Vizquel of the Giants over some comments that Vizquel made about him after the 1997 World Series. So what makes Mr. Mesa's act so cowardly? He is a relief pitcher, and a late inning one at that. This means he almost never gets to take an at bat and have to face the retribution for throwing at a batter. If he was a man, he would have taken it up with Vizquel face to face. However, Mr. Mesa, proved once again, as he did back in the 1997 World Series when he blew the save in game 7 against the Marlins, that he just is not the man his mouth wishes he was.

Now if Bud Selig was a quarter of the man Judge Kennesaw Landis was, he would suspend this coward and leave the umpiring crew and Giants' starter Matt Morris alone. Unfortunately for baseball fans, Landis is in the grave and Selig is still the commissioner.

Hypocrites

So this morning as I was on my way to an appointment, I was listening to the local alternative station (Live 105) and their new morning show. One of the stories that they did just before 7 a.m. dealt with an apparently request for a temprorary restraining order by WalMart against a man who has been campaigning against them by selling his t-shirts on Cafepress.com. (If you want to visit his sites, they are here and here.)

After bashing WalMart, two of the three morning show personalities went on to say how they shopped at WalMart, even though they hated it. If you are going to be against something, be against it. Don't be a hypocrite and rail against it because its the proper liberal/progressive thing to do.