Thomas Breen photo
Eviction plaintiff -- not landlord -- Willis Gorham outside courthouse.
Father sued daughter, sister sued brother, and cousin sued cousin, during the first day of in-person eviction hearings since the start of the pandemic.
That was the scene Tuesday in the third-floor courtroom at the state courthouse at 121 Elm St.
Dozens of tenants, landlords, lawyers, and court staffers crowded into the high-ceilinged, acoustically challenged courtroom between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. for the first in-person slate of New Haven “housing session” hearings since the Covid-19 pandemic sent proceedings online in March 2020.
Several of those cases involved family members seeking to evict other family members — in some instances for alleged nonpayment of rent, in some for more complicated disputes over property ownership.
Over the course of his nearly uninterrupted three-hour stint on the bench, state Superior Court Judge Anthony Avallone — back from retirement for the day and filling in for New Haven’s usual housing court judge, John Cirello — again and again reminded the various parties about the limits of his purview.
“In the end, I make a decision based on the facts and the law,” he said in his introductory remarks to the full room of mostly mask-less attendees. “Not emotion. … The facts and the law. That’s my job.”
Tuesday’s in-person session marked an abrupt shift from housing court’s past two years of operations, during which time eviction hearings have taken place entirely online via a live video-streaming service.
That pandemic-era switch — like so many Covid-induced changes to the state’s eviction court — is now over, with masks off, plexiglass barriers largely gone, and almost all such hearings going forward to take place in person at the Elm Street courthouse. (Criminal housing court cases have been taking place in person since last October.)
Case #1: Father Vs. Daughter
Three of the 11 cases that made their way before Avallone on Tuesday were intra-family eviction disputes.
One such case involved Willis Gorham, a 77-year-old Fair Haven resident looking to evict his daughter from their Chapel Street apartment.
According to court records, Gorham had an oral month-to-month lease with his daughter whereby he charged her $70 per week to rent two bedrooms on the first floor of a two-family house. He claimed in his April 1 eviction lawsuit that she didn’t pay rent in March, and therefore had to move out.
In a legal “answer” document, his adult daughter replied that her dad was actually the one behind on rent, that he is not the landlord, and that she just needed “more time to move out & find a stable place” to live.
Both Gorham and his daughter appeared before Avallone on Tuesday without the help of any attorneys — that is, they represented themselves pro se.
That lack of professional legal guidance immediately proved to be a handicap for Gorham as he tried to make his case to Avallone for his daughter to be moved out.
Do you own the property in question? the judge asked.
“I lease the property,” Gorham replied, and have lived there for over two decades.
“Do you sublet the apartment?” Avallone asked.
No, Gorham said.
So… what is your relationship to this property? Avallone asked.
Gorham repeated that he has lived there for 25 years. He raised his family there. City land records show that the property is actually owned by the Corporation for Urban Homeownership in New Haven, which Gorham said he worked for for decades.
In order to successfully pursue an eviction, Avallone said, a plaintiff has to prove that they own the property or that they are a legal representative for the owner of the property. That ownership claim is key for proving that one can legally enter into a rental agreement with a tenant. And a plaintiff must first be able to prove that they had a legal rental agreement before they can successfully argue that the tenant has broken that agreement.
Avallone returned to the court records filed by Gorham in this case. So, your daughter didn’t pay the $70 weekly rent starting in March? he asked.
Gorham said his daughter last paid rent late last year.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Avallone replied.
So you don’t actually own the property, and the allegations laid out in the original eviction complaint aren’t accurate?
Gorham said that he has actively stopped taking rent from his daughter, because he wants her out of the house.
“So you’re telling me you don’t want her to pay $70 a week?” Avallone asked.
That’s right, Gorham said. Instead, he just wants her to move out, because, he claimed, she hasn’t been living up to her side of their agreement to help take care of the house and pay rent in a timely manner.
“I can’t just make stuff up,” Avallone said with exasperation from the bench. “You just testified that you have no case.” Because you don’t own the property. Because the claims in your lawsuit about when she stopped paying rent are different than those made in court. And because you have now said you won’t accept her rent — even as you try to evict her for nonpayment of rent.
“Every time you speak,” Avallone said to Gorham, “you throw your own case out the window.”
Avallone then ordered the case dismissed.
Before closing out the matter entirely, Avallone also admonished Gorham’s daughter, who didn’t have a chance to speak up during the hearing as the judge parsed through the legal inadequacy of her father’s underlying lawsuit.
“I wouldn’t be flashing your eyes at him or at me,” he said with frustration to Gorham’s daughter. “Don’t disrespect him or this court.”
"Opening Day"
The state courthouse at 121 Elm St., home to New Haven's housing court.
The housing court docket on Tuesday was stacked with roughly 35 eviction cases.
Many of those cases dodged advancing to trial via the court-ordered process of mediation.
Eleven sets of tenants, landlords, and lawyers wound up appearing directly before Avallone to make their respective cases to the judge before the 1 p.m. lunch-time recess.
The room was nevertheless bustling with bodies, nerves, and a steady hum of chatter — at least, when Avallone wasn’t in the middle of hearing cases — in a way that it hasn’t been since March 2020.
A half-dozen legal aid lawyers scoured the room, looking for their tenant clients. The judicial marshal urged everyone to put their phones on silent and take their hats off while the judge was on the bench. Court-appointed mediators whisked landlords, tenants, and lawyers into side-rooms and hallways to try to strike last-minute negotiated agreements between the parties to help them avoid going before the judge.
And the judicial proceedings, always difficult to hear because of the way that the room’s 20-foot-high ceiling traps and muddles most voices, stopped and started periodically as someone opened the door to the third-floor atrium — letting in a whole new clamor of airplane-engine-like noise that further drowned out whatever was being discussed in the courtroom itself.
In the rush before Avallone started hearing unresolved eviction cases at around 11 a.m., one lawyer sitting in the back of the room — an area that is reserved for juries during trials, but is otherwise occupied by attorneys during a typical session of housing court — leaned towards a colleague and used a sports metaphor to describe the feeling of being back in person for eviction proceedings.
“Opening day,” he said.
Case #2: Cousin Vs. Cousin
Another family-centered case that made its way before Avallone Tuesday involved Ronald Copeland, who filed an eviction lawsuit against his cousin on March 16, calling on her to leave a Shelton Avenue single-family house for not paying her $1,050 monthly rent in February.
In a March 24 legal answer filed with the court, Copeland’s cousin described undue rent hikes imposed by her cousin. She expressed her frustration with what has become a “personal and an unwarranted family feud.”
Dressed in a white button-down collared shirt and a black vest, Copeland made his case to Avallone for why his cousin needs to move out. He alleged that she not only fell behind on rent, but that she also failed to pay late fees he tagged on on top of the delinquent monthly unpaid payments.
“Just like cable, phone, and Macy’s,” he said, “they add on a late fee.” And so did he.
You claim to own the Shelton Avenue property in question, right? Avallone asked.
Well, Copeland replied… “My mother died, and in her will, she left it to the control of my kids.”
He said that his two daughters and son now live out of state. He said they’ve entrusted him to take care of the house on a day to day basis, to lease it out to tenants, to collect rent, and to pay all of the other expenses associated with the building’s upkeep.
So, Avallone asked again, are you the legal owner or a legally authorized representative for the owner?
“No,” Copeland replied.
“Then you have no right to bring an eviction,” the judge said. “In order to evict these people, you need to own the property” or prove that you otherwise are a legal representative for the owner.
Copeland said he has a letter from his children, indicating that they want him to act on their behalf when it comes to the house.
Have you recorded that title claim on the city land records? Avallone asked.
No, Copeland said. “I don’t have Internet.” He said he doesn’t know how to make such a land-records filing.
“You’ve got to follow the law,” Avallone told Copeland. That means, before filing an eviction, you have to prove that you actually own the property or are a legal representative for the owner, and that you can therefore enter into a legal agreement with a tenant.
Avallone said, as the judge, he can’t give Copeland any kind of legal advice.
But, he contninued, in order to proceed with an eviction, “you need to do something else to get your name on the property.”
During her time to address the court, Copeland’s cousin said she is “emotionally tired” from all of the legal wrangling with her family member in this case and previous ones.
Avallone stopped her from testifying further. “Ma’am, I’m trying to tell you, you’re going to win” this case, he said. “We don’t need this.”
He advised both sides to sit down with a lawyer. But for now, he said to the tenant, “He can’t evict you. So you’re going to win.”
He then entered a judgment in favor of the defendant because “the plaintiff has not proved he owns the property.”
Avallone’s written order, filed on Wednesday, repeated that finding.
“After hearing from the parties, the court finds the plaintiff failed to prove he is the owner of the property and subsequently he is not authorized to bring an eviction based upon nonpayment of rent,” Avallone wrote. “Based upon this, the court enters judgment for the defendant.”
Judge: "Good Settlement Better Than Trial"
Judge Anthony Avallone, on the bench.
Avallone, a former New Haven state senator and former New Haven housing court judge who now splits his time between Connecticut and Florida, kicked off the day’s proceedings with a version of the speech he would give every session years ago when he occupied that housing court bench full time.
“I want to thank you for your patience,” he said, standing up from his chair and leaning towards the roughly 50 tenants and landlords and lawyers sitting in the audience section of the courtroom before him.
He recognized that the day was likely a stressful one for many in the room. He acknowledged that the acoustics of the space might make the proceedings feel all the more difficult.
And he stressed the importance of trying to reach a deal with a court-appointed mediator in the crucial minutes before an eviction case makes its way to the judge.
“You need to listen, but, more importantly, you need to hear what the other person is saying,” Avallone said. “Nobody likes sitting at a table and being talked at. The mediator’s job is to try to get you to talk to one another and try to resolve your differences without the necessity of a trial.”
Before the pandemic, he continued, “over 90 percent” of eviction cases were resolved via mediation.
“This is the first time in a long, long time that those mediations will take place face to face,” he said. Not via Zoom.
He said that his dad, who was not a lawyer, imparted to some a crucial piece of legal advice that has stuck with him throughout his years on the bench: “If you could get a good settlement, it’s better than a trial.”
That’s because you may think you know the law, he said to the full courtroom. But when your case comes before a judge, you may be in for a rude awakening.
Case #3: Sister Vs. Brother
In a third family-focused eviction dispute heard by Avallone on Tuesday, two Branford-based siblings and their lawyers duked it out over a Branford condo caught in probate limbo.
According to court records in the case, Maria Rush, the executrix of the estates of her parents, filed an eviction lawsuit against her brother, Paul Torcellini, last November. The original lawsuit claimed that, last September, Paul did not pay “all taxes and assessment as rent when due or within the grace period provided for the residential property,” which is a condo on Jerimoth Drive in Branford.
On Nov. 24, Judge Cirello entered a judgment of possession in favor of the plaintiff, finding that the defendant no longer had a right to occupy the condo.
With the help of attorney Rowena Moffett, Torcellini then filed a motion to open the eviction judgment in April. With the help of attorney Josh Brown, Rush soon thereafter filed an objection to that motion.
Both sides — with their respective lawyers — appeared in court on Tuesday to make their case for and against the motion to open the eviction judgment, as well as for and against Torcellini’s application to stay, or delay, the execution of the eviction judgment.
What’s the background on this case? Avallone asked.
Moffett said that the condo in question was the disputing siblings’ family home. She said Torcellini and Rush reached an agreement that, upon the death of their parents, he would buy the condo for $175,000 once the tax liens on the property were resolved. He would also pay for the other bills and expenses of keeping up the property in the interim.
Last summer, Moffett said, the two siblings communicated via text message about changing how they paid the property’s local taxes. Due to a misunderstanding about that process, she said, Torcellini did not pay the taxes directly himself, and was subsequently hit with an eviction notice by his sister.
She also said that a new purchase price for the condo is the subject of an emergency probate hearing next week.
“Mr. Torcellini, wouldyou be willing to agree to a stay of execution and a denial of the motion to open,” Moffett asked, if the plaintiff agreed to a stay of execution of 90 days after the final judgment on the purchase price by the probate court?
Brown, representing the plaintiff, said his client would be happy to see the Torcellini’s motion to open dropped or denied — but that his client wouldn’t agree to a 90-day stay.
“The motion to open is a lever being used to continually keep this matter from being resolved,” he argued. He urged the judge to turn down the motion.
Moffett and Torcellini then laid out their case for Avallone to reopen the judgment, relying on a printed-out copy of a text message exchange between Torcellini and Rush that they argued showed that he was not at fault for missing last year’s property tax payment.
Brown urged the court not to take the print-out as evidence, saying that it shows only a small selection of a larger text message thread.
Avallone was on the brink of granting Torcellini’s motion to open — when Brown argued that the defendant hadn’t met the legal threshold for winning such a motion.
That is, the motion wasn’t timely, he said, and there was another post-judgment stipulation in the case that hadn’t yet been discussed on Tuesday, but that the defendant has violated.
“There’s a lot more going on here,” Brown said.
Avallone ultimately agreed to “mark off”, or pass over, the case — pushing out debate on the matter for Judge Cirello to preside over at a future hearing in this case, scheduled for a date to be determined.
"Eviction Machinery" Keeps "Cranking"
Madison Hawamy file photo
Legal aid's Elizabeth Rosenthal.
How did Tuesday’s first in-person housing court session look to two experienced local attorneys?
New Haven Legal Assistance Association (NHLAA) Deputy Director Elizabeth Rosenthal and fellow legal aid attorney Amy Eppler-Epstein, both of whom were in the third-floor courtroom on Tuesday, said they were worried by the apparent pre-pandemic normalcy of it all.
“It was a little disconcerting the way it was just up and running as if Covid had never happened,” Rosenthal said. “It feels like we’ve learned nothing from the pandemic about health and housing, and stability and housing. It feels like the eviction machine, the eviction machinery is just cranking it out again.”
Eppler-Epstein agreed.
She said that two key lessons from the ongoing pandemic are “how fundamental housing was to the health of individuals and society at large,” as well as “how the government is capable of intervening effectively to protect people from that harm [of losing their home] and protect people in a way that fundamentally helps both the tenants and the landlord.”
They pointed to two of Tuesday’s eviction cases in particular — both of which involved tenants in Meriden who were trying to overturn default judgments that a previous judge had entered against them because of their lack of filing a timely appearance in their respective cases.
In both cases, Avallone found that the tenants — who argued that they had suffered various health and employment setbacks during the pandemic — did not prove that they had defenses to make for why they missed their earlier court hearings. He therefore denied both requests to open those judgments, thereby allowing their respective evictions to continue.
Rosenthal and Eppler-Epstein also expressed concerns about how infrequently the judge asked about pending UniteCT state rent relief cases when deciding on whether or not an eviction can move ahead.
“It’s a fiction that people can represent themselves,” Rosenthal said. “The court paperwork that people get with a summons is not easy to read.” That’s all the more true when someone is in the stressful spot of getting evicted.
“It would be nice to see judges having a slightly more relaxed view of what should qualify as a motion to open.”
And how has the recent launch of the state’s new right to counsel program affected their experience of housing court?
“I would say there were more of us there” on Tuesday, Eppler-Epstein said, noting how at least five or six legal aid attorneys were in the courtroom, representing tenants in mediation or before the judge.
Other recent stories about New Haven eviction cases working their way through housing court so far in 2022.
• Rent Help Winds Down. What’s Next?
• Eviction Withdrawn After Rent Catch-up
• Hill Landlord Prevails In“Lapse” Eviction
• Landlord Thwarted 2nd Time On Eviction
• Church Evicting Parishioner
• Hard-Luck Tenant Hustles To Stay Put
• Eviction Of Hospitalized Tenant, 74, Upheld
• Judge Pauses Eviction Amid Rent-Relief Qs
• Amid Rise In“Lapse-of-Time” Evictions, Tenant Wins 3‑Month Stay
• Leaky Ceiling, Rent Dispute Spark Eviction Case
The owner of a property isn't the only one that can bring an eviction action. Also the judge was asking pro-so plaintiffs technical questions and punishing them for not knowing the correct legal ease. He also incorrectly stated the standard for a Motion to Open in another case.