LA Apartments Saga: Part 3
This post is part 3 of a planned 4 detailing the process of suing my old landlord for illegally withholding my security deposit. I won.
Unsatisfactory Negotiations
Edited for privacy, including to remove the names of LA Apartments/Custom Design Fur Corp employees/agents.
On Sep 20, 2023, at 14:58, Employee 1 wrote:
Dear Mr. Eric Dasmalchi,
I hope this message finds you well. I wanted to inform you that we have received your letter regarding the dispute over your security deposit. We have conducted a thorough investigation to address your concerns.
After careful review, we have decided to approve your request for a refund of the $560 charge for the painting. However, we regret to inform you that we are unable to provide any further refunds, as the remaining charges are deemed valid.
I’d like to draw your attention to Section 2 of your lease agreement, which states that the cleaning fee shall be deducted from your security deposit. Additionally, according to Civ. Code § 1950.5(b)(3), “A landlord may properly deduct from the departing tenant’s security deposit the amount necessary to make the rental unit as clean as it was when the tenant moved in…the landlord must look at how well the departing tenant cleaned the rental unit, and may charge cleaning costs only if the departing tenant left the rental unit (or a portion of it) less clean than when they moved in. Reasonable cleaning costs would include the cost of such things as eliminating flea infestations left by the tenant’s animals, cleaning the oven, removing decals from walls, removing mildew in bathrooms, defrosting the refrigerator, or washing the kitchen floor.”
We understand that you left the property in good condition, but it is our standard procedure to conduct a deep cleaning (which includes cleaning the interiors of cabinets, deep cleaning of bathrooms, tubs, toilets, blinds, vents, etc.) of the premises to restore it to its original condition.
We hope to come to a fair resolution. If you agree to the additional refund of $560 for paint, please let me know. We will then send you a settlement agreement form for your signature. Once that is completed, we will promptly process your new refund.
Thank you for your understanding.
Warm regards,
Employee 1
LA Apartments
I got this email 9 days after sending my demand letter . First of all, it shows that just by sending the letter they were willing to refund another $560. Not bad, and I wouldn’t judge anybody in a similar situation for stopping here and settling.
But, in my case I was certain that they could not charge me for cleaning, either. Plus I didn’t like how LA Apartments had tried to raise my rent illegally multiple times and then blatantly refused to give me the initial inspection statement. So I chose not to settle, at least not for the $560.
On Sep 20, 2023, at 15:31, Eric Dasmalchi me@email.com wrote:
Dear Employee 1,
Thank you for your email.
I will consider your offer and respond next week. editors note: I was at Disneyland!
-Eric Dasmalchi
Re: 3333 Mentone Security Deposit Dispute September 25, 2023 at 08:24 PDT
Dear Employee 1,
I’ve thought about your offer and I respectfully decline.
I’m well aware of my obligations under Civil Code 1950.5, and I believe I have fulfilled them.
As I explained in my letter (reattached for your convenience), you did not fulfill yours. If you thought any additional cleaning was required, you had to note that on the initial inspection report. You did not do so, and in fact you did not provide the report at all, in clear violation of the law.
My demand remains the same: a full refund of what is owed to me, in this case $881.96.
I will give you until an extended deadline of Wednesday, October 4 to refund me.
Otherwise, we will simply have to come to a fair resolution in court.
Sincerely,
Eric Dasmalchi
I chose to simply reiterate my position. I didn’t hear from them after that. So with negotiations apparently at an impasse, I waited a little while to see if they would return the rest of my deposit. No luck. I don’t believe in sending a bunch of repetitive emails - if they wanted to resolve things surely they would have done so. So it was time to file my first (and hopefully last) lawsuit. I filed on October 9, 2023.
One nice thing about not settling is… I get to blog about it! I assume that settlement agreement would have included a confidentiality clause…
23BHSC01067
this, and most other LA County case numbers, can be looked up here
The Judicial Council has a pretty great website laying out the steps and considerations involved in starting a small claims case. A key initial step is to figure out who to sue. LA Apartments is not the actual name of their corporation, so you can’t just sue LA Apartments. It’s actually Custom Design Fur Corporation as I mentioned in Part 2, so that’s the one to sue. Here’s their Fictitious Business Name Statement to save you the trouble of getting in from the county (note the expiration date if you’re relying on it).
The Judicial Council’s website suggests referring to your lease to determine your landlord’s actual legal entity, but my lease was actually not of much help. It lists an “WSV, LLC” as the owner and makes no mention of Custom Design Fur Corporation beyond stating that rent should be payable to “CDF”.
This information is not enough to find LA Apartments’ correct legal entity to sue, and I can only conclude it reflects their attempt to intentionally obfuscate it. WSV, by the way, seems to be short for Westside Village, LLC since that entity shares the same address and agent as Custom Design Fur Corporation.
Once you figure out who to sue, the next steps are to file and serve the lawsuit. What a pain this would turn out to be. If you search up Custom Design Fur Corporation on the Secretary of State’s website, you’ll find the name of their agent and an address for service of process:
10401 VENICE BLVD 711 LOS ANGELES, CA 90034
Here’s 10401 Venice Blvd. It’s a two story building. Normally, the first digit of a suite or office number represents the floor. Through an exhaustive investigation and USPS address records, we found no evidence whatsoever of a suite 711, or indeed any numbered above the two hundreds.
Curiously, they do seem to receive mail at that address. So how does that which does not exist receive mail? In a way, it does exist. It’s box 711 at the UPS Store, which is itself suite 106. “10401 Venice Blvd 711” misformats their address, which would properly be something like “10401 Venice Blvd STE 106 PMB 711”. But the USPS is smart enough to know that since there is no suite 711, mailers must mean box 711 at the UPS Store. So LA Apartments gets their mail even when they don’t correctly state their address. Sometimes they do though, I didn’t notice it at the time but my lease actually did spell it out as “10401-106 Venice #711” - still not the right format but it does include the suite number of the UPS Store.
The smart thing to do at this point would probably have been to read up on how to serve a private mailbox in California, and either guide your patient friend serving as process server or hire a professional.
I didn’t grasp this at the time, so I went for another option: service via the California Secretary of State. This requires obtaining a court order first, which I did (there’s a small claims form for that!). The request for court order should include a declaration of all the reasonable diligence your process server did at the address designated. Next you must have someone hand-deliver a very specific stack of paperwork to the SOS which can only occur in Sacramento or maybe sometimes in Los Angeles (I recommend calling ahead if you do go this route). For added peace of mind, attempt to get proof from the SOS that they actually sent it out. Technically your proof of service comes from your process server handing over the documents at the SOS counter, but it’s handy to have confirmation that they processed it.
And then you largely wait. Maybe the lawsuit will induce them to offer a more favorable settlement before trial. I had to do a couple other small things, like mail LA Apartments/Custom Design Fur Corporation and the court copies of my evidence since I’d be appearing telephonically, and make an offer on the court’s own mediation platform.
Goofy Negotiations
I was a little surprised to hear nothing from them for so long. Trial was scheduled for December 14, and finally on December 8 I started getting emails from some other employee.
Evidently this new person had done no coordination with whoever made their previous offer, since they started out by offering me less than they did several months back. This made no sense at all, why on earth would I take a lower offer now after having to do all that effort to move my case along?
Also, the tone of their messages implied to me that they saw it as some sort of customer service issue and that they were the ones to decide what is right and what is wrong. Which is not how any of this works. The problem wasn’t that I was not satisfied, the problem was that they didn’t follow the law. Nor did they engage with any of my arguments at all, just repeating that since they decided to paint and clean the unit, I had to pay. Which is still not how any of this works.
I’d been keeping some of my friends up to date on the progress of the case, and we found the December 8 email especially hilarious. They apparently felt the need to share the alleged details of their repainting process, including that they “[used] a brush for the edges and a roller for the large areas”, let each coat dry before applying the next, and removed masking tape. Well ok then, it still doesn’t make any difference to whether LA Apartments can legally retain my security deposit after a nearly four-year tenancy while refusing to do a proper initial inspection.
I started calling them “Team Brushes and Rollers” after that.
The employee also started calling me frequently, even after I said I’d only communicate in writing. I let them keep calling and negotiating against themselves. They eventually said they’d release my whole deposit… on the eve of trial. That’s just too late. If they wanted to pay me, why not pay me when I first explained why they had to pay me? Or after I filed suit?
If this is what it takes to get your deposit back in a pretty straightforward situation, I can only imagine how many people’s deposits they’re holding on to. So no, time to go to court.
On Dec 8, 2023, at 16:23, Legal wrote:
Dear Eric Dasmalchi,
We are sorry to hear that you are not satisfied with your initial inspection and deposit refund. We appreciate your feedback and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
We have reviewed your request for a refund, and we have decided to offer you a partial refund of $300. This amount is based on the following factors:
Expenses to re-paint the unit
Expenses to clean the unit.
We hope that you will accept this offer as a gesture of goodwill and a resolution of this matter.
Sincerely,
Employee 2
LA Apartments
From: Eric Dasmalchi me@email.com Friday, December 8, 2023 4:31 PM
Dear Employee 2,
Absolutely not.
Sincerely,
Eric Dasmalchi
On Dec 8, 2023, at 18:19, Legal wrote:
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you and we appreciate your patience and cooperation during this process.
We would also like to remind you that you moved in into a freshly remodeled unit, which had new paint, flooring, appliances, and fixtures. The unit was in excellent condition when you signed the lease agreement. However, after you vacated the unit, we noticed that the paint was peeling off and discolored in some areas, which required us to repaint the entire unit.
The repainting process involved the following steps:
We removed any loose or chipped paint with a scraper and sandpaper.
We repaired any holes or cracks with putty and sanded them smooth.
We applied a primer to the walls to ensure a uniform and durable finish.
We painted the walls with a high-quality oil-based paint, using a brush for the edges and a roller for the large areas.
We applied two to three coats of paint, letting each coat dry completely before applying the next one.
We cleaned up the work area and removed any masking tape or drop cloths.
As a one-time curtesy, we are willing to return $600 of your security deposit.
Sincerely,
Employee 2
LA Apartments
From: Eric Dasmalchi me@email.com Friday, December 8, 2023 6:33 PM
Employee 2,
Thanks for writing this out.
I can only refer you back to my demand letter which lays all of this out in detail.
To summarize, the accepted useful life for paint, no matter how fresh and excellent, in California is two to three years.
I lived there nearly four. I doubt the court will agree with you that your paint is an exception.
Sincerely,
Eric
From: Legal Tuesday, December 12, 2023 5:09 PM
Dear Eric Dasmalchi,
Thank you for your response. With respect, we must hire professionals to clean the unit. We can send you an Invoice to prove our expenses. With that been said we can offer you $700 to settle and move on.
Sincerely,
Employee 2
LA Apartments
From: Legal December 13, 2023 at 16:13 PST
Dear Eric Dasmalchi,
This letter is to inform you that we have decided to release $881.96 of your security deposit for the property located at 3333 Mentone Avenue Apt , Loas Angeles, CA 90034. The original amount of the security deposit was $1,000, and we have deducted $118.04 for the Utility charges.
Please let me know by if you agree to dismiss the case. You can contact me by phone at or by email at .
Sincerely,
Employee 2
LA Apartments