One of California’s largest apartment landlords has agreed to pay $19.25 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging it wrongly withheld security deposits.
Essex Properties, which, according to internal company documents, owns 47,874 apartment units in California —5,311 of these in San Diego County —agreed to the multi-million-dollar payout to end a lawsuit filed in San Diego County by former tenants who said the company violated state law and refused to return security deposits.
The company did so, according to the complaint, by using internal purchase orders to charge tenants for repairs, deep cleaning, painting and other services. State law requires landlords to provide tenants with actual invoices from third parties.
And, when third parties did have to perform repairs, Essex was accused of inflating the cost of the invoice.
In one instance, cited in the complaint, a San Fernando man said Essex charged him nearly $2,000 to replace the carpet in his unit. The man then obtained the invoice from the contractor. The invoice amount was $907.
In other cases, the work was never performed and still tenants were charged.
At Essex’s Form 15 apartment complex in Downtown San Diego, a tenant said Essex sent her move-out statements that included a $550 charge for painting the unit. When the tenant called the company, they had no record of the work.
The same Form 15 tenant was also charged for carpet cleaning. The apartment, however, had concrete floors.
Jimmie Davis Parker represented the tenants in the class actions. The San Diego-based attorney’s firm, Robinson & Parker, specializes in security deposit class actions and has recovered more than $27 million for tenants in San Diego and throughout California in separate class action lawsuits against Los Angeles billionaire developer Geoffrey Palmer, MG Properties and San Diego-based Willmark Communities.
“This agreement would return money and provide debt relief to more than 200,000 former Essex Property Trust tenants,” said Parker in a statement to Times of San Diego. “Those renters represent only a small fraction of the Californians vulnerable to having their security deposits improperly withheld. Challenging an improper deduction individually can cost more than the amount at stake, giving powerful landlords an unfair advantage.”
Parker says the class action lawsuits such as these are important, especially when dealing with some of the largest landlords in the nation.
“Class actions give tenants the ability to stand together and obtain relief they could not secure alone. Powerful landlords have to follow the law, and when they don’t, they have to pay.”
In a statement to Times of San Diego, the attorney for Essex provided the following quote: “Plaintiffs allege Defendant assessed and retained charges against former tenants’ security deposits not authorized by Civil Code section 1950.5. Essex denies any wrongdoing but recognizes the risks, expense, and uncertainty of continued litigation. The parties have agreed to settle the matter.”
