2
custodian of records, which stated that the Department had no record of receipt of the April 11,
2022 served three-day notice.
Plaintiffs’ opposition to the motion was premised upon two legal arguments. First,
plaintiffs substantially complied with the Ordinance by submitting a notice to the Department
by email on May 23, 2022—approximately one month after the complaint was filed. Second,
any failure by plaintiffs to comply with section 8.52.090 was not an element of their prima
facie case and the Ordinance does not specify that a violation serves as a defense to an action
for possession.
The trial court denied defendants’ motion for summary judgment following a hearing.
The court explained its rationale as follows: “the thrust of the ordinance is that the County is
providing an enforcement mechanism for the Department to be able to enforce any violations of
the rent control ordinance. And the purpose, as far as the court can determine, of requiring the
notice to quit to be sent to the Department is so the Department can decide if it wants to
intervene, if there are other tenants who have similar circumstances, or to otherwise become
involved with this enforcement mechanism.
“The Department has not done so in the months since the notice to quit and proof of
service were sent to them. Further, unlike the COVID Tenant Protection Resolution . . . from
the county, . . . there is no affirmative defense provision in the rent control ordinance like there
is in the COVID resolution.
“Given the number of times that the Board of Supervisors has looked at the issue of
tenant protections in LA County over the course of the last two years and the over dozen times
that it amended the COVID tenant protection resolution, and the one time that it amended the
rent control ordinance, if somebody thought that there was something missing, they could have
gone before the Board of Supervisors and said, you ought to put in an affirmative defense
provision like the one that you have in the COVID Tenant Protection resolution.
“Not being there, and with the [ar]ticulated remedies and enforcement provisions that I
see in the rent control ordinance, it’s the court’s view that the county did not intend for a delay
in providing the County with the notice to the Department provision to bar an otherwise proper
failure to pay eviction.”