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Santa Monica Rent Board Wrong in Hot Tub Case, Appeals Court Rules | |
Jorge Casuso February 21, 2012 -- The Santa Monica Rent Control Board (RCB) should not have issued a rent decrease to two tenants because their landlord lowered the temperature on a hot tub during workday hours, the California Court of Appeals ruled Thursday. The 10-page ruling reverses a trial court decision in favor of the Rent Board, which found that the rent reduction was justified because the hours that the property's Jacuzzi was heated were reduced from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., down to 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. The landlord of the 32-unit building -- Santa Monica Properties (SMP) -- also installed a sauna timer that "reduced greatly" the length of time that the sauna would stay heated "from 1 hr to 25 min.," the board found. In a 99-page decision that set forth 58 separate "Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law," the rent board hearing examiner ordered a $48 per month rent decrease to tenant R. Liza Salvatore ($3 of which was for an unrelated matter) and a $25 decrease to tenant Roberta Rosskam. The Appeals Court found that the Rent Board took more than a year to issue a final decision and did not give SMP, which installed a timer on the hot tub shortly after the decision, the opportunity to have it modified. "Pared down to its core, SMP's request included a showing that it had installed a timer on the hot tub that would enable tenants to heat the water in an hour," the court wrote. Instead, "the hearing examiner sent letters to both parties stating that no hearing would be held on their objections to his compliance decision." "The record shows that RCB violated every single one of the time limits prescribed in the RCL (Rent Control Law) and RCB Regulations noted above in addressing the current rent adjustment petitions," the court wrote in the ruling. However, the ruling stated that because a court "may not control
legislative discretion... our courts may not compel RCB to adopt any specific
regulation governing the enforcement of time limits for determining rent
adjustment petitions." |
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