Eric Dinnocenzo - The Tenant Lawyer (12 page)

A third reason, and the most compelling one, was that Judge McCarthy simply didn’t want jury trials to occur in his courtroom. Jury trials took the ultimate decision-making power out of his hands, and they were also more work for him. They required him to go through the jury selection process and to charge the jury at the conclusion of the case. Over the years he had reportedly made this preference quite clear to lawyers by beating up on them in front of juries, making it tougher for them to win.

The colonel said, “You know Judge McCarthy is going to come down on you for requesting a jury trial, and it’s also going to take up much more of your time. And it’ll all probably be for nothing. You should’ve asked me first.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

He paused, shaking his head. “Why are you requesting a jury, anyway?”

“Because of the son.
I think if a jury knows what’s at stake with regard to the scholarship, they might not evict the family. I think this is one instance where a jury, even in conservative Worcester County, is better than having Judge McCarthy hear the case.”

“I don’t think you can get into evidence that if your client is evicted, her son won’t get a scholarship. It’s not relevant and it’s prejudicial. If I were
Merola
, I’d object to it.”

“I know. It’s a problem. But maybe I can slip it in.”

“Slip it in?” the colonel said incredulously, shaking his head like a scolding parent. “Well, it is what it is. From now on, I want to know before a jury trial is requested.”

“Sorry.”

I left his office feeling freer inside, since I could now run with Anna’s case and conduct my first jury trial. Although I chafed under his authority, his take on the case confirmed my own doubts. I was probably going to lose.

11

I be
gan to focus more intensely on Anna’s case. Even though I had never met her son, David, I was motivated by his story and what was at risk. It was upsetting to think that a kid from the projects who had performed well in school and earned a college scholarship could lose it through no fault of his own. It struck me as exactly the type of case that had compelled me to go to law school in the first place.

My first step was to research whether, under the law, the Rite-Mart parking lot could be considered “on or near the premises” of George Washington. If I could convince the judge that it was not, I could possibly get the case dismissed on the grounds that the use of the fourteen-day notice was improper. I went on Westlaw (an online legal research service) and discovered that Massachusetts courts had not interpreted that phrase in the context of residential leases. But I did find something else that I thought might be helpful. There was a Massachusetts law
which provided that the sale of a controlled substance within 1000 feet of a school was considered to be “near” the school. That law could be persuasive because it used the term “near” in the context of drug sales and set forth 1000 feet as an outer distance. Of course, the Rite-Mart would have to be more than 1000 feet away from Washington in order to analogize to the case.

Next I researched court decisions from other states that concerned the eviction of public housing tenants due to illegal drug activity. I found one that was helpful, issued by the Connecticut Superior Court, holding that 0.3 miles away was too far away to be considered on or near the premises. A Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision determined that 0.9 miles was also too far away to be on or near the premises. Since they were decisions rendered by out-of-state courts, they would also be persuasive and not binding.

With the legal research out of the way, my next step was to get out of the law library, so to speak, and drive out to Washington and measure the distance to the Rite-Mart. One day Anna called me to ask if a trial date had been scheduled to which I responded, not yet. When I informed her of my plan, she suggested that I pick up David and have him accompany me. Really, there was no point in having him come with me, since it was a simple task that I could do on my own. But I agreed to it, as I was curious to meet him. I also figured she probably wanted him to meet a male who she thought would be a good role model, and I was happy to oblige in that respect.

It was about forty degrees outside, and the sun was peeking through a gray, overcast sky when I drove through the front entrance of George Washington. I was entering a world of dilapidated buildings and colorless concrete and steel, and it felt as if I was leaving the rest of the world behind and entering a dangerous place. My insides tightened up a little. I had never driven in there before, despite having represented many of its tenants.

Directly ahead of me were three high-rise towers clustered together, encircled by a ring of four-story buildings. The buildings were constructed during the Fifties and had a box-like architectural design that reminded me of pictures of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The towers were the center of crime at Washington. Reportedly, a gang would commandeer an apartment in one of them and use it as a headquarters for its drug operations. When the housing authority, working in conjunction with the Worcester police vice squad, performed a sweep to stop the illegal activity, the gang would end up commandeering a different apartment.

The streets all had patriotic names like Constitution Avenue and Hancock Lane, the result of some ridiculous, over-the-top form of social engineering. Name the project and the streets in it after the founding fathers and you’ll get a patriotic, civic-minded population. As if it was that easy. The streets were nearly empty, probably due to the cold. In contrast, during the summer throngs of people reportedly hung out on the front steps of buildings and in the streets in order to escape the heat in their apartments. Violence occurred on those summer nights, when somebody would talk shit to somebody else, or a young guy would accidentally bump into another young guy who was just looking for trouble. Then out would come a weapon and blood would spill. The previous summer, a seven-year-old girl who had been leaning out her window died from a gunshot wound to the face when a gang member, shooting at a rival gang member, missed his target. You heard all the time about that type of senseless violence happening at Washington.

There were no stores or restaurants located inside Washington. No churches. In fact, there were no other neighborhoods located nearby. It was a densely populated housing project that was isolated from the rest of the city.
People on top of other people with no other distractions.

I drove by an old Dodge Aries that was elevated on jacks and stripped of its tires and pulled into a spot outside of Anna’s building, one of the low-rises. The exterior had spray paint on it and there were a few broken windows covered with boards. I felt nervous getting out of my car, even though no one was around. Warily, I walked up to the front door of the building, and when I buzzed Anna’s apartment the buzzer seemed dead. I fished around in my briefcase for her file to get her phone number and then called her on my cell phone.

“It’s Mark. I’m outside.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I forgot to tell you about the buzzer. It
don’t
work. I’ll be down.”

I turned around in order to keep an eye on my surroundings. The cars in the parking lot were mostly older models. A basketball court was directly across the street and the rims on both ends were bent and without nets. After a minute went by Anna appeared at the front door wearing jeans and a red sweater. “Come in. It’s cold out. David is inside.”

I followed her up a flight of stairs and through a dimly-lit
hallway,
its gray concrete walls splotched with spray-paint graffiti. The apartment doors were painted an outrageously bright red. Entering her apartment, I saw a small kitchen set off immediately to the left that was in worn and tattered condition. It had an old, deep basin-style sink with rusted pipes underneath, and some of the kitchen cabinets hung in misalignment and were covered with scratches. The brown linoleum floor was ripped up in a few places revealing off-white flooring underneath. Beyond the kitchen there was a small dining area with a square table, and beyond that was a living area. Off to the right a hallway led to the bedrooms and bathroom.

A slender, good-looking, young Latino kid was standing in the living area. He was about five-feet-ten and thin with a shock of dark hair that fell over his forehead. Anna practically took him by the arm and led him towards me. “This is David,” she said. Up close I saw that he had high cheekbones, full lips, and placid brown eyes. I extended my hand to him, and he shook it in a shy yet polite manner, his grip neither firm nor weak.

“So I hear you won a scholarship to U. Mass-Amherst.”

“Yeah,” he answered.

“That’s great. Congratulations.”

“I’m so proud of him,” Anna said with sparkling eyes. She affectionately tugged his arm.
“My son.
Going to college.
Who figured?”

Hopefully going to college, I thought to myself.
Hopefully.

“All right, Mom,” David said good-naturedly but with mild annoyance. I sensed that his mother had fawned over him hundreds of times in the past, and it was something he disliked but had resigned himself to having to tolerate.

“So how long have you guys been living here?” I asked.

“Fifteen years,” Anna answered. I suddenly recalled that she had told me that in housing court the morning I first met her.

Standing there with my briefcase slung over my shoulder, I took another look around the apartment. The kitchen table was surrounded by four green plastic chairs. In the living area was an old TV with a wood-paneled frame, a shabby brown couch with a plaid design, and a wood coffee table with a full ashtray on it. Not quite blending into the picture was a very basic wooden chair, like one you’d see at Starbucks or in a school classroom, set off by
itself
and angled directly at the TV.

“It’s cold in here,” I observed. “What’s with the temperature?”

“This is how they keep it,” Anna responded.

I noticed that both Anna and David were wearing sweaters.

“One of the windows in here is drafty, too,” David explained. “There’s like a two-inch gap on it. The cold air just streams through. When it’s windy, it’s bad.”

I went over to the windows, which looked out over the parking lot, and saw that the metal frame on one of them was bent so that it could not shut completely. When I placed my fingers at the bottom of it, I felt a cold draft.

“What else is the matter with the apartment?” I asked.

“A lot,” Anna said. She led me into the kitchen and pointed at the oven. “Our oven doesn’t work. The burners on the top, they work, but the oven
part don’t
.”

“How long has it not worked for?” I asked.

“About a year.”

“A year?
Did you complain about it to the housing authority?”

“Yeah, but they don’t do nothing about it. They don’t care.”

“Did you complain in writing?”

“No, I told them sometimes when I paid the rent.”

“Did you complain about the heat and the window?”

“Yeah, I complained about that, too.”

“Verbally but not in writing?”

“Yeah.”

Anna pointed out the condition of the kitchen floor and cabinets that I had noticed upon entering the apartment.

“Is there anything else wrong in the apartment?” I asked.

“The bathroom,” David said.

The bathroom door was constructed of thin, flimsy wood that was nicked in many places, and there was a three-inch hole near the doorknob that was covered with duct tape. Bending down at the side of the old, white porcelain tub, Anna pointed out how the faucet constantly dripped. She could hear it at night unless she closed her bedroom door. I noticed that the shower walls had some spots of gray mold; there were no windows in the bathroom and when Anna flipped the switch for the exhaust fan there was no effect.

I took a notepad out of my briefcase and began recording the bad conditions.

“Mice,” David said. “We have mice, too.”

“Everyone has
mices
and the housing authority knows it,” Anna told me, “but they don’t do
nothing
.”

“How often do you see them?” I asked.

“Two a day on average,” David said. “Mostly you can hear them at night. Like the other night I came into the kitchen to get a glass of water and turned on the light and I saw two of them in the sink. Then they just ran.”

“They’ve gone into our food,” Anna informed me. “Like, if you leave bread on the counter, forget it. They get right into it. And you can see their stuff around. The little brown pellets.”

“All right,” I said. “We’re going to get these conditions fixed. I’m going to address them with the housing authority lawyer. Did you ever call the Board of Health to have them perform an inspection?”

“I tried to call them once,” Anna responded, “but they won’t come and inspect. They said that the housing authority should take care of it and to contact them.”

“That figures,” I said. Unfortunately, that response was all too common from the Board of Health when it came to complaints of bad conditions made by public housing residents. The Board of Health assumed that since the housing authority was a governmental agency, it would properly address tenant complaints and make repairs. It didn’t consider that the housing authority might not do its job and might allow persistent bad conditions to exist in its projects. Of course, a consequence of this unwritten policy was a lightened workload for the Board of Health inspectors, not to mention that they were spared having to enter a dangerous place like George Washington.

The three of us exited the bathroom and went into the living room.

“What if they say no?” Anna asked me. “They haven’t fixed these things so far.”

“Then we’ll go to court and ask for an order forcing the housing authority to make repairs. But I don’t think it’ll come to that.” I looked over at David. “All right, well, do you want to measure the distance to the Rite-Mart with me?”