The first case, Singleton v. Zephyr Properties, demonstrates the experience of one
pro se tenant's experience as a plaintiff in a small claims case against a real estate
corporation represented by an attorney with extensive experience in Landlord-Tenant Court. The case also represents the most limited landlord-tenant relationship possible because the suit involved a deposit on an apartment into which the tenant had never moved. The brevity of the relationship resulted in the development of very few
interorganizational dynamics. However, while lacking in interorganizational dynamics, this first chapter provides rich data on the intraorganizational dynamics, which provide the platform for interorganizational themes. The themes I identify mid-case and expand on at the end of the chapter are: Low-income Landlords/High-income Tenants, Judicial
Decision-making, and Trial Participant Satisfaction. After presenting these themes, I
describe the exploratory data about cases disposed of during pre-trial procedures gathered via three sets of interviews about litigants who settle, mediate, or default on their cases.
The limited landlord-tenant relationship represented by this case also provided the opportunity to delve into the reasons behind the tenant’s abortive effort to leave his current rental property. Tenants find themselves in a chain of relationships with landlords while they move from property to property, while landlords use a variety of mechanisms to manage the dynamic flow of their tenant clientele. Both the tenant’s relationship with his or her landlord and the landlord’s management of their rental business bring tenants and landlords and/or their attorneys into L-T Court.
The Making of a Courtroom 151 The Tenant: Albert Singleton
Albert Singleton was determined to force Zephyr Properties to return his rental deposit. Zephyr Properties rented new apartments, which he knew would be in better repair than his current apartment. His current landlord made no repairs to the property, and he was tired of making them himself. A recent divorce had forced Mr. Singleton to become a tenant again after owning a home with his wife for twenty years. He had been a friend with his landlord, and while he still considered him a friend, he ranked him as the worst landlord possible. When I asked him why, he said,
Because he does nothing. The roof needs to be. done, h was nice inside, but he doesn’t put any money in it. It’s a single house, and I rent it with my daughter. When owners think of property as a place they’d live in, then they’ll be good landlords. I know that he wouldn’t live there, so all it’s about is strictly collecting rent. This situation hasn’t affected our friendship, because I presented solutions. If I wanted the apartment painted, I bought the paint, did it, and took it out of the rent. I was in this situation, and I thought it might be a good time to move. (Interview Notes).20
This succinctly describes some of the fundamental dimensions of landlord-tenant conflicts. In the first place, for Mr. Singleton the house is a home for him and his daughter, but for his current landlord it is a source of income. According to Mr.
Singleton, it is an important source of income for his landlord who is “living on the edge” (Interview Notes). Secondly, the landlord-tenant relationship is characterized by
intimacy and adaptation, whereby a relationship that is both personal and business in nature is negotiated via a set of interdependent interests.
30 I identify sources o f direct quotes throughout the document as “Interview Notes” for data collected during interviews, “Field Notes” for data written up after observation, and ‘Transcript” for data quoted directed from trial transcripts.
The Making of a Courtroom 152 Unlike the large corporation that owns the property he took to court, it was clear to him that his current landlord could not afford even basic repair services: “He doesn’t have a local person to call in an emergency. I had no electricity for a couple of days, and he didn’t have anyone who could take care of that” (Interview Notes). Though they had negotiated a series of agreements that Mr. Singleton make repairs and deduct them from his rent, the situation was still precarious: “He’s just making it more expensive for himself. I have yet to sit down and talk - 1 get too angry, and I need the place. I can’t just say what I want. If I want to keep the place, I have to walk on egg-shells” (Interview Notes). Maintaining the balance of money for home is difficult when the landlord has so little to invest back into the property or the landlord disinvests in order to increase profits before selling or abandoning the property. The existence of low-income landlords runs counter to general assumptions about the wealth of landlords and emphasizes the need to provide public assistance to landlords as well as to tenants. I will return to this theme at the end of the case analysis.
Mr. Singleton was hopeful about his $799 lawsuit against Zephyr Properties for the one-month rent he had placed to hold an apartment, which he later decided he no longer wanted. He did not even think anyone from Zephyr Properties would appear in court to defend against such a small claim, based on the interview I had with him after the trial. He had not even seen the apartment he had reserved with a one-month deposit and he knew the landlord he was suing was a large corporation that might have to spend more on an attorney than it would recoup by winning the lawsuit. After all, he had decided not to hire an attorney because he would lose money even if he won all of his deposit back.
The Making o f a Courtroom 153 He had first called Community Legal Services (CLS) when the real estate company did not return his deposit. This non-profit agency, often referred to as Legal Aid, is
Philadelphia’s primary source of legal representation for low-income litigants. Attorneys and paralegals provide some advice over the phone, but mainly provide services through a walk-in system at their downtown office. All cases are screened for income
qualifications and legal merit before a CLS attorney will accept a client, a critical procedure for a perpetually under-funded institution.
The CLS staff member who spoke with Mr. Singleton advised him to go to “Small Claims Court” to file a claim asking for the money back plus interest. In fact, the support provided to plaintiffs in Municipal Court was motivated in large part by cases exactly like Mr. Singleton’s, brought by aggrieved consumers against organizations with far more resources than they had to pursue their grievance (Ruhnka, 1979). Still, Mr. Singleton immediately felt the impact of not having an attorney when he sat down with a filing clerk for help in writing his complaint. Though he found the clerks helpful while they assisted his filing, he was frustrated that he could not get help calculating the interest on his deposit because he did not know when to start the interest amount nor did he know how much interest to charge. Rather than guessing, Mr. Singleton decided to drop this aspect of his claim.
In spite of this difficulty, Mr. Singleton remained highly motivated to see his lawsuit through to trial. His motivation had two levels, one personal and one political. From a personal standpoint, Mr. Singleton stated, “I just wanted to get the money - 1 felt entitled to it. They [CLS] gave me basic advice to get started.” (Interview Notes).
The Making of a Courtroom 154 From a policy standpoint, he hoped his suit could dissuade Zephyr Properties from
treating tenants like him unfairly: “I wanted to have a positive impact. Most tenants are small and don’t have the resources of a large corporation” (Interview notes). Mr. Singleton was hopeful that by suing he had helped dissuade Zephyr Properties from keeping rental deposits in the future.
The Landlord Attorney: Barbara Doubleday
Based on the data Barbara Doubleday provided to me and my observations of her active practice in Landlord-Tenant Court, Mr. Singleton’s hopes at having an impact on Zephyr Properties would not be realized no matter the case’s outcome.21 Her client was one of the largest landlords in Philadelphia, managed thousands of rental units, and had assets that rendered Mr. Singleton’s $799 claim (and the money they paid her to try the case) virtually inconsequential. Ms. Doubleday described her relationship with Landlord- Tenant Court as “very involved” for 10 years. In those years she had seen many
landlord-tenant cases, most, no doubt more complex than the one brought by Mr. Singleton.
To Ms. Doubleday, the case was a simple matter of a broken oral lease, but she was not hopeful that the judge would uphold the law. She wrote that the Court’s
responsibility was “to follow the law and be respectful” (Interview notes), but later said, “judges don’t follow the law” (Field Notes). When I asked her in what ways they did not follow the law, she hesitated before answering. She then stated that while the relaxation
21 Ms. Doubleday opted to respond to the interview questions in writing, which she did on a copy o f the interview protocol. I had a follow-up interview with her, and also observed her numerous times in Landlord-Tenant Court.
The Making of a Courtroom 155 of the formal trial requirements in L-T Court could explain some of the ways that judges do not follow the law, many other dismissals of legal procedure and substantive law was simply a part of the court’s customs (Field Notes). As Abel (1982) points out, the purpose of small claims judicial informalities are to reduce technical impediments to pro
se litigation, not the application of substantive law.
Not surprisingly, then, her expectations the day she came to the court were “very low [based on] the judge’s past decisions.” At the beginning o f the hearing, she
presented her simple legal argument about Mr. Singleton’s breach o f his oral lease with Zephyr Properties: ‘There was an oral lease, my client [Zephyr Properties] relied on his [Singleton’s] representations that he wanted the apartment and on the security deposit to hold it. It wasn’t rented until July because they couldn’t take it off the market, Judge. He had, they [Zephyr Properties] had an oral obligation to provide it to him ....” (Transcript). According to Pennsylvania contract law, oral agreements are binding and enforceable in court, and according to the Landlord and Tenant Act oral leases are the equivalent of month-to-month written leases (Kupersmith, 2000). In Ms. Doubleday’s view, the case should have been open and shut in her client’s favor. She fully expected to lose it outright.
The Verdict
To Ms. Doubleday’ surprise, the judge awarded Mr. Singleton only 48% of his claim. Although the court record reflects that Mr. Singleton won the case because the judge found for the plaintiff, the case was a narrow landlord victory according to the
The Making of a Courtroom 156 trial, whether as admitted liability or a settlement strategy, so the verdict’s percentage of the claim equaled percentage of the disputed amount awarded to Mr. Singleton. Though Ms. Doubleday was glad that her client would not have to pay the full amount for which Mr. Singleton sued them, she felt that the court should have “found against the tenant,” thereby dismissing the complaint in its entirety.
Though I did not obtain an interview with this judge for this case analysis, his inclusion in the statistical analysis provides some information about him in the context of his verdict rate relative to other judges. Based on the judicial assignment chart on page 116, the judge who heard Singleton v. Zephyr Properties is Judge “I.” I will refer to him as Judge‘T ’ throughout this chapter and elsewhere where such a reference does not jeopardize revealing this judge’s identity. I will do the same for the other judges I refer to throughout the study (with the exception of the one judge who I interviewed for Case Analysis #3, whom I have given a name in Chapter 7). This chart summarized the data from the previous chart for the purposes of the case analysis and ethnographic chapters:
Table 31: Judge Descriptions
Judge Landlord Win Rate Percentage of Cases Heard Judge Landlord Win Rate Percentage o f Cases Heard
Judge “A”* 0% 1% Judge P " 63% 10%
Judge “B” 33% 6% Judge “G” 66% 2%
Judge “C” 40% 3% Judge “H” 71% 16%
Judge “D” 42% 8% Judge “I” 80% 33%
Judge “E” 62% 5% Judge “J” 92% 16%
* This judge was excluded from the statistical analysis because he heard only one case in the sample, and this judge and observations o f cases he presided over are also not referred to in the qualitative sections of the study.
The Making of a Courtroom 157 Judge“I” provided no description of his legal decision-making in this case, but a reasonable inference can be made from the trial transcript. The judge appeared unmoved by the oral lease breach argument, but he was interested in her assertion that Mr.
Singleton had provided a false statement to her client in an effort to get out of the lease. Mr. Singleton, in fact, admitted to the judge that he had fabricated a letter from his boss stating that he was being transferred after talking with someone at Zephyr Properties who indicated that he might be able to get his deposit back if he was relocating due to
employment. Ms. Doubleday put Mr. Singleton “on the stand” concerning this issue:22
Ms. Doubleday: So the person who wrote it didn’t write it, you did, and you wrote it for the purpose of trying to get out of the lease.
Mr. Singleton: No, I wasn’t trying to get out, I never had a lease.
Judge: Well, let me, let me ask something. In order for him to, to, to have cause him to have consummated and moved into a place, how much money would he have needed?
Ms. Doubleday: To hold the apartment, Judge -
Judge: No, no, that wasn’t the question.
Ms. Doubleday: Consummated, I don’t know what consummation means, Judge, in -
Judge: Weil no, no -
Ms. Doubleday: - the context of this (Transcript).
Based on the attorney’s legal reasoning, the agreement was binding at the point of the tenant’s oral statement that he would rent the apartment, so the judge’s concern about how much money the tenant needed to rent the apartment was immaterial. The tenant’s use of fabricated evidence eroded his credibility and contradicted his complaint, which indicated that Mr. Singleton had “changed his mind" about renting the apartment.
22 The attorney’s examination is informal. There is no separate area for the tenant to “stand” as a witness, and there are little recognizable patterns in terms o f putting on witness testimony, except in a small number o f the trials in which both landlord and tenant were present and represented by an attorney.
The Making of a Courtroom 158 Finally, Ms. Doubleday’s amusement with the judge’s use of the term “consummate” illustrates the gap between attorneys’ and judges’ adherence to legal principles and use of legal terminology.
Judge “I’s” decision to virtually split the damages claim, then, appears to be based less on an application of law than a sense of fairness: the landlord would have needed more money from the tenant before allowing the tenant to move in, so the agreement wasn’t fully binding. The tenant therefore deserved the return of the money, except for the fact that the tenant lied in order to get it back. Therefore, the tenant only deserves somewhat less than half of the money he is suing for. That this kind of judicial decision making process is common in L-T Court proceedings is amply supported by lack of statistical relationship between law and verdict. I explore it further as an important theme in the next section of this chapter.
Legal Strategies, Housing Strategies
One strategy that may have helped Ms. Doubleday is a common one used by attorneys who try their cases against pro se tenants and without their own witnesses:
using information gleaned from the tenant before the hearing as evidence against the tenant. Legally, attorneys with no witnesses are in a somewhat precarious position in that they are supposed to introduce all evidence, both documents and testimony, by examining or cross-examining witnesses. While some provision is given to attorneys to represent their clients without adhering strictly to this basic procedural requirement, this rule is dramatically relaxed in typical small claims proceedings. This is done in part to avoid the requirement that pro se litigants examine themselves, but it helps make pro se tenants
The Making of a Courtroom 159 particularly vulnerable to experienced litigators.
In this case, Mr. Singleton refused to meet with Ms. Doubleday in the settlement room next to the courtroom, but she was still able to use an apparently brief conversation before the hearing to her advantage. When testifying about the falsified letter, Ms. Doubleday stated, “Mr. Singleton still lives in Philadelphia and still works in
Philadelphia, and I confirmed that with him before Court” (Transcript). Ms. Doubleday used her pre-trial discussion with Mr. Singleton like an informal deposition, which allowed her to forward her argument without having to rely on potentially differing testimony during the trial itself. The attorney doesn’t even need the tenant to say
anything to use this strategy; at the beginning of the trial, Ms. Doubleday stated, “I talked to Mr. Singleton just before Court and advised him that the sworn allegations in his complaint were not exactly accurate” (Transcript). When stated with the authority of an attorney familiar to the court, such a statement appears to carry significant weight. Engler (1997) points to the use of similar tactics by attorneys who take advantage of pro se
litigants’ lack of representation.
The false statements made by Mr. Singleton, which Ms. Doubleday sought to highlight with other statements made before the trial, were made as a part of his own housing strategy. The reasons Mr. Singleton gave for deciding not to rent from Zephyr