by Andy Chen | Jun 20, 2018 | California, Individual, Law, in real life
Retaliatory eviction is one of the things that often arises when the relationship between a landlord and a tenant in California sours. As you can perhaps guess from the name, the landlord is evicting the tenant in retaliation for something the tenant did. As you should hopefully also be able to guess, the word “retaliation” implies a timeline — the landlord must evict the tenant for something they have already done. In other words, the tenant must do something first and then the landlord must evict them in retaliation. A tenant cannot claim the landlord is evicting them out of retaliation when the eviction came first and the tenant’s action came second. (True story: I once had a case where the tenant tried to do this.) The governing statute for residential retaliatory eviction in California is section 1942.5 of the California Civil Code. In this blog post, we’ll go over it. As usual, this post will just be an overview and will – by no means – be an exhaustive description. Please take a look at the full text of Section 1942.5 yourself or consult an attorney in your area regarding your particular situation. If you are in a commercial landlord-tenant situation, retaliatory eviction under Civil Code 1942.5 does not apply to you, but you may have an equivalent against retaliatory eviction under a 1981 California Supreme Court case called Barela v. Superior Court, 30 Cal.3d 244. Section 1942.5 of the California Civil Code basically establishes three categories of activity that could qualify as retaliatory eviction. A lot of stuff can qualify as retaliatory eviction, but not everything. In my experience,...
by Andy Chen | Jun 17, 2018 | Individual, New York, Statutes... and stuff
In general, it is a good idea to have agreements and contracts in writing. A writing is generally more clear and less susceptible to jaded recollection than an oral agreement, for instance. In some instances, however, the law requires that an agreement or contract must be in writing in order to be enforceable. This requirement for a writing is called the Statute of Frauds. In California, the Statute of Frauds is in California Civil Code section 1624. In mid-2017, I made a Youtube video in which I went over California’s Statute of Frauds. I have a bunch of other videos on my Youtube channel as well. Most are California-focused because that’s where I practice primarily, but I am trying to add more New York videos. Due to New York Judiciary Law section 470, though, (see below), my New York videos are going to go over statutes and other publicly-available legal resources only. Anyway, take a look around the channel and subscribe. New York has the Statute of Frauds as well. The idea is the same — namely, that certain agreements and contracts must be in writing in order to be enforceable — but as is usually the case, the implementation varies from state-to-state. In other words, New York’s Statute of Frauds requires different agreements be in writing than California’s Statute of Frauds does. New York’s Statute of Frauds is codified in New York General Obligations Law Section 5-701. I’ll go over that section briefly, but I encourage you to take a look at the actual statute section in order to get a complete description of what agreements are covered....
