A longtime resident of a South Los Angeles apartment building fought back tears as she testified Thursday that her former landlord did little to address her family’s concerns about vermin, lack of hot water and poor plumbing.
Francisca Garcia blamed the problems on Franco Haeim and his company, Bracha Investments LLC, which owned the three-story, 26-unit building at 2108 Maple Ave. from July 2008 until December 2012.
“My family and myself suffered very much during the time that Frank owned the building,” she said with the help of a Spanish-language interpreter. “My unit was super horrible with lots of cockroaches and mice.”
Garcia is among 90 plaintiffs in a suit filed in July 2013 against Bracha Investments. The case is now in trial in Los Angeles Superior Court and the allegations include negligence, breach of the implied warranty of habitability, premises liability, intentional infliction of emotional distress and unlawful collection of rent.
In their court papers, defense attorneys say many of the tenants never notified their landlord of any problems and that repairs were prevented when the residents changed the locks on their doors without notifying management. The lawyers also say the residents knew of the conditions there when they chose to sign their lease agreement
Garcia said she moved into her apartment in November 1991. She said cockroaches and mice plagued her unit even before Bracha Investments acquired the building, but most of her testimony focused on the years it was under the company’s control.
Garcia testified that on one occasion she and the family were in the living room when they became aware of a large number of cockroaches in the kitchen.
“It seemed like a swarm,” she said. “My husband and my children, we all got scared. My husband was saying we have to kill them.”
Garcia said she and her relatives sometimes trapped five to 10 mice a day and that many of the rodents carried fleas.
She said her son acquired welts because of the vermin infestations.
“He would get them all over his body, but they weren’t small, they were big,” she said. “I would feel scared and helpless because I didn’t know what to do.”
Garcia testified that school officials asked if the welts resulted from abuse in his home and that doctors kept giving her son the same ineffective cream to rub on himself.
Garcia said that on another occasion matter from the ceiling fell on her son.
She testified the family was forced to keep food in metal pots so that mice could not bore through the packaging. She said she sometimes had to boil water so the family could bathe because they could not get any hot water from the faucets.
Earlier today, Fernando Refugio, the first tenant to testify in the trial, said the current owner has brought improvements, but that it’s still hard to forget the prior problems.
“Things are better in my unit, but the effects physically and mentally are still there,” Fernando Refugio told a Los Angeles Superior Court jury.
Refugio said he signed a lease agreement in March 2012 and that he spent $30 to $40 monthly to buy traps and insecticide because of the rodent problem. He said that when he complained to an on-site manager about the conditions he was told he could get a $10 monthly rent credit.
Refugio said his family acquired a cat, Whiskers, who was helpful in catching some of the mice. He said he also had problems with cockroaches that he dubbed “street roaches” because they were more typical of the type he saw outdoors.
Mold developed on a wall in his bathroom because the window was placed so low that it had to be kept closed during showers for privacy reasons, preventing the type of ventilation that could have avoided the buildup of condensation, he said.
Refugio said he collapsed from emotional distress last year, but acknowledged under cross-examination that Bracha Investments no longer owned the unit at the time.
Refugio testified the current owner spent money to properly fumigate the building and also replaced the worn carpet in his unit with linoleum.
In other testimony, environmental health specialist Jessica Alvarez said she could not specifically remember visiting the building.
However, she confirmed she wrote a report in 2011 in which numerous tenants complained of cockroaches and vermin.
She said cockroaches typically come out at night, but that her report indicated she saw several when inspecting the building’s units in the daytime.
— City News Service