Leaks, Plumbing Problems Stall Attempted Eviction

A Superior Court judge ruled that a Westville family can stay in its rented home through the end of July and does not have to backpay rent for May and June because of its landlord’s delays in fixing the property.

Judge Walter Spader, Jr. issued that ruling in the case of Torello, Michael v. Artis, Tommie Et Al, which he had heard in the third-floor state housing court at 121 Elm St..

Like most cases that come before housing court, the lawsuit filed by landlord Michael Torello against his tenants Tommie Artis, Kimberly Griffin-Artis, and their six children was an attempted eviction for nonpayment of rent.

Since November 2016, the Artis family has been living in a four-bedroom, single-family home that Torello owns at 132 West Elm St. in Westville. In his lawsuit, Torello alleged that Tommie Artis failed to pay his family’s $1,800 monthly rent for April 2018. According to court records, Torello filed the motion to evict on May 3.

In a May 18 answer to Torello’s complaint, Kimberly Griffin-Artis responded that the family had stopped paying rent because of persistent problems with mold, water leaks, and broken appliances at the property.

“A case was filed w/ Livable City Initiative,” the city’s ani-blight agency, she wrote, ​“due to the deplorable conditions of the property. To date, no repairs have taken place inside the home. The Landlord has filed these papers erroneously and illegally as we received all paperwork the day before the answer date. The plumbing continues to flood and the electricity has constant shortages.”

In a courtroom that has seen attempted evictions for nonpayment of rent quickly turn into deliberations on landlords’ proper upkeep of safe, sanitary, and habitable conditions at their properties, the case pitting Torello against the Artis family played out as another referendum on just who owes what when a lease is signed and a contract is made between landlord and tenant.

Both landlord and tenants represented themselves, without outside legal counsel, in court recently.

“I Made A Mistake There”

Torello pleaded his case before Judge Spader by saying that the Artis family never paid their rent on time, and that he had to collect the $1,800 owed each month through cash installments paid out over the course of the month.

He said he told the Artis family in March that he planned on selling the home and that he would not be renewing their lease. The original November 2016 lease with the Artis family was for 18 months, and therefore ended at the end of May 2018.

According to city land records, in addition to owning 132 West Elm St., Torello owns a three-family home at 31 Barnett St. in Westville and a three-family home at 134 Hubinger St. in Westville. Torello said he lives at the Hubinger Street address, and that he works for the federal government in Westchester County, New York.

“Once I informed Artis that I would not be renewing the lease,” he told the judge, ​“that’s when all the complaints began.”

He said Artis called LCI, which then conducted an inspection on May 1 and issued a housing code compliance notice that day citing Torello for a number of problems with both the interior and the exterior of the property.

The report, written by LCI Deputy Director Rafael Ramos and based on an inspection conducted by Rick Mazzadra, found over 10 violations of the city’s Housing Code Ordinance at 132 West Elm. Those violations included:

• Torello’s failure to clear a tree that had fallen in the rear yard.
• Missing smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors.
• A furnace in need of being serviced.
• A persistent water leak from the second floor that was causing damage to the property’s ceilings and that was running through the first floor and ending up in the basement.
• Chipped and peeling paint on doors and door jambs throughout the home.
• A stopped up sink in the second floor bathroom.
• Kitchen floor tiles that were cracked and had sharp edges.

The report also references a dilapidated garage in danger of collapse. Although Torello said he did not receive notice of the dilapidated garage until after the Artis’s reached out to LCI, city land records show that the Building Department issued an unsafe structure notice on Jan. 23, 2018, that said the garage was in imminent danger of collapse due to a collapsed roof and rear wall.

“With all that opportunity to tell me what the problems were,” Torello told the Independent after the court hearing. ​“They [the Artis family] didn’t tell me know solitary thing” that was wrong with the apartment. Until, that is, he said he planned on selling the place and discontinuing their lease.

In court on Thursday, Torello described the complaint as a ​“textbook case” of tenants looking to stay in place without having to pay rent.

“If it’s so bad, why don’t they want to leave?” he asked. ​“All they do is not pay rent.”

In taking the May 1 LCI report into evidence, Judge Spader asked if Torello had any documentation from the city that showed that he had addressed LCI’s concerns with the upkeep of the property.

Torello said he didn’t, and that he only had documentation of the problems themselves. Spader asked if all of the problems had been addressed. Torello said the garage had been fixed, and that the interior and exterior property concerns would all be fixed in the next couple days.

“You’re really not helping your case,” Spader said, pointing out that Torello was submitting evidence that LCI had made him aware of these housing code violations on May 1, and that, in court on June 7, Torello was admitting that most of the concerns had still not been fixed.

“I made a mistake there,” Torello said.

Living In Trash

Kimberly Griffin-Artis, standing alongside her husband Tommie, had a very different perspective on the dispute.

“We pay $1,800 per month so our kids don’t have to live in trash,” she told the judge. She said Torello has failed to hold up his end of the bargain as the owner of the property, and has failed to remedy dangerous and inconvenient conditions with the interior and the exterior of the property that had persisted for months.

She said a huge wind storm knocked over a large tree in their backyard back in October 2017. She and Tommie said that tree wasn’t cleaned up until just a few weeks ago, thereby rendering the backyard unusable for she and her husband’s six children, who range in age from 2 to 18 years old.

She said plumbing in the house has been an ongoing problem. She said for the past six months she has had to flush the toilet manually with a bucket of water that she keeps in the bathroom, because the pipes are backed up. She said feces water once came down from the second-floor bathroom and onto the kitchen table on the first floor.

She and Tommie said the oven door fell off over a month ago, and Torello had still not replaced it. Tommie said he can’t run a 400-degree oven with no door on with a 2‑year-old in the house.

“This has nothing to do with us not wanting to move,” Tommie Artis said.

Torello said he had taken so long to clean up the tree in the backyard because of a prolonged battle with Continental Insurance over whether or not the provider would cover the claim through his homebuyer’s insurance policy. He also said he had been in touch with ​“very lax tree cutting people,” who had taken so long to respond to his request because of all the trees they had to clean up in the wake of a winter and spring rife with storms.

“Are you really playing in the backyard in the winter with snow and ice on the ground?” Torello also asked. He said he was skeptical of Tommie and Kimberly’s claims of inconvenience of not having access to their backyard during the winter.

Torello also said he had had hired a plumber to look at the pipes, and that the plumber had reported nothing was clogged. He said the Artis family had broken a toilet, broken the stove, and broken a vanity in the home, and that he was in the process of replacing all three.

The Artis family said it was initially interested in buying the home from Torello, but now it just wants to move out and find a new place to live in the neighborhood. Kimberly said the family would be happy to pay back rent for May and June 2018 if Torello followed through on the LCI-mandated fixes.

”Troublesome And Callous”

In his ruling, issued last Friday, Judge Spader entered a judgment in favor of the landlord, but applied a stay of execution through the end of July. He ruled that the Artis family can stay put at 132 West Elm until the end of July, and that they do not have to pay Torello back rent for the months of May and June.

Throughout the three-page written decision, Spader consistently remarks upon Torello’s failure to fix up the property according to city standards.

Last week Spader formally replaced the retired Judge Anthony Avallone as New Haven’s state housing court judge.

“[A] tenant need not pay rent if the landlord fails to comply with applicable building, housing and fire codes, and such failure materially affects the tenant’s safety or renders the premises uninhabitable,” Spader wrote, citing Sections 47a — 7 and 47a — 4a of the Connecticut General Statute.

In the case of West 132 Elm, Spader wrote, LCI’s May 1 report clearly stated that there were safety concerns with the garage not being removed or fixed, with missing smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors, and with water leaks and associated damage.

“The Court finds the Defendants’ testimony credible as to the poor conditions of the plumbing,” Spader wrote.

“The Court finds the Plaintiffs’ testimony about the speed in which he plans on doing the repairs lacking in credibility,” he continued. ​“And finds that the Plantiff did not present the Court with evidence that he satisfied the May 1, 2018 LCI violations.”

He wrote that the tenants should not have resorted to simply stopping paying rent while the landlord was addressing LCI’s concerns.

“External issues that do not affect the habitability of the premises do not excuse rental payments,” he wrote.”

However, he continued, the court found the landlord’s lack of addressing the water leak and plumbing concerns ​“troublesome and callous.”

As those water and plumbing concerns were not addressed as of the trial date on June 7, Spader ruled that the Artis family does not owe rent for May or June 2018. He issued a judgment in favor of the landlord for non-payment of April 2018 rent, but put a stay on the execution of the eviction through July 31, 2018, because of the unaddressed conditions of the property.

“The Execution may issue if the Defendants have not vacated the premises as of August 1, 2018,” he wrote.

He also wrote that the court is not requiring that rent be paid for July 2018, nor is it making any findings as to the July 2018 habitability of the premises.

“If the Plaintiff actually does repair the property,” he wrote, ​“he can demonstrate such repairs and any entitlement he may feel has to payment from the Defendants at a subsequent small claims proceeding.”