Nora Grace-Flood Photo
Mark DeFrancesco: I treated tenants/workers well.
Mark DeFrancesco denied that he offered no beds to the 19 Guatemalan migrants working for him and living in one of his houses.
He denied that he deliberately locked out two of those tenants after they got injured at work.
And he denied that the eviction he has launched against those two tenants is a way to avoid paying worker’s compensation.
“I got them a 60 inch TV!” he testified in housing court. Two of them, in fact, he added at his lawyer’s prompting.
DeFranesco was telling his side of the story in the third-floor Elm Street courtroom Tuesday as Judge Walter Spader Jr. presided over a second day of proceedings in DeFrancesco’s eviction lawsuit against Edgar Becerra and Josue Mauricio Arana on Tuesday afternoon.
Following the conclusion of testimony, Spader is now weighing how to decide on the case. DeFrancesco and his lawyer have asked him to evict the tenants as soon as possible, while the tenants and Becerra’s lawyer, New Haven Legal Assistance Association’s Tyrese Ford, have asked for the eviction to be delayed until worker’s compensation disputes between the landlord and tenants are resolved.
The previous week’s proceedings established that Becerra and Arana were two of numerous workers whom DeFrancesco’s painting and power-washing company, MDF, recruited from Guatemala last summer by sponsoring their temporary H‑2B visas. An associate of DeFrancesco’s picked Becerra up from the airport in June and brought him to the three-family house at 200 Peck St., Becerra testified. He said that 18 others who had also come to work at MDF from Guatemala were living in the house, sleeping on the floor, taking turns cooking meals for one another.
Becerra maintained that he fell multiple stories off of a ladder and incurred another injury falling out of a second-floor window while working at MDF. He said he was never provided with training or adequate safety equipment. He said that MDF required him to return to work immediately after both injuries, but the second fall sent him to the hospital, leading the painting company to fire him.
On Tuesday, DeFrancesco and his associates offered a different story in answers under oath to his lawyer, Josh Brown.
Brown asked DeFrancesco about Becerra’s testimony regarding “what seemed to be negative conditions of the residence.”
DeFrancesco implied that there were only 16 people living in the house — “two people per bedroom” — and that no one slept on the floor: “We provide a box spring and mattress for every guy.” He said he supplied the first two weeks’ worth of groceries for the tenants, providing clothing, cell phones, internet, and utilities, all for a weekly rent of $75.
And he said he said he provided a “60-inch TV.”
“I believe there were two flat-screen TVs?” his lawyer asked. DeFrancesco agreed.
DeFrancesco was asked about Becerra’s allegations that he and Arana were illegally locked out of the apartment once they had been fired; he maintained that the lockout was accidental.
He said that the man in charge of coordinating logistics with the house — Johnny Armijos, whom he previously denied having employed at MDF — had changed the electronic key code to the house due to a mechanical problem and break-ins in the area.
“He gave the codes to the tenants who were there,” DeFrancesco said. He said he never told Armijos or the other tenants to refuse Becerra and Arana access to the code.
Armijos himself corroborated this story through testimony on Tuesday. And MDF’s vice president, Lisa Hollingsworth (who happens to be DeFrancesco’s sister), echoed this narrative of events.
Hollingsworth also said that MDF didn’t fire Becerra after his injury — that instead she opened a workers’ compensation insurance claim and tried to assist Becerra with his visa.
MDF has in fact fought against Becerra’s requests for payment after his injury before the state Worker’s Compensation Commission, writing in a form that “no accident, occupational disease or repetitive motion injury arising in and out of the course and scope of employment” had occurred.
Throughout the hearing, Becerra stood by his assertions about the house’s conditions and the lockout. (He spoke in Spanish through an interpreter.)
Becerra said that when he and Arana lost access to the building, other tenants told him that “Johnny Armijos was ordered not to let us inside the building.”
For two nights, Becerra said, he and Arana slept “on the streets” and relied on assistance from a church.
He reiterated that he had been fired after being hospitalized. “It was not convenient for them to have people who were not productive,” he said.
Arana did not testify or make any arguments in court, although Ford described Arana’s situation as “similar” to Becerra’s.
The judge should consider all of of these factors, Becerra and Ford argued, when deciding whether to kick the tenants out.
Over the course of the hearing, Attorney Brown objected to the discussion of Becerra’s injuries, arguing that they weren’t relevant to the eviction case.
“To me, this is a simple situation of a weekly lease that had expired, weekly rent that wasn’t paid,” Brown said. He argued that since Becerra’s visa was originally slated to expire at the end of November, he wouldn’t have originally been able to stay in the house at this point anyway.
“What we have here is not a simple case,” Ford asserted. He noted that DeFrancesco filed the eviction case before Becerra’s visa (which has since been extended) was originally supposed to end.
And he argued that DeFrancesco is responsible for the situation that led to Becerra’s inability to pay weekly rent: The landlord brought Becerra to the United States for the sole purpose of working at his company, allegedly requiring him to work without training, and then allegedly firing him after he got injured multiple times at work.
The eviction, Ford maintained, is DeFrancesco’s attempt to circumvent the ongoing worker’s compensation case and avoid properly paying Becerra.
To this last point, Brown replied that a worker’s compensation hearing could still take place were Becerra to be evicted and forced to return to Guatemala.
“All the world holds remote hearings,” he said.
In the end, Brown said, the case boils down to the fact that “somebody is lying — either my three [witnesses], or Mr. Becerra.”
With the judge's permission, Edgar Becerra stands briefly on crutches to ease his hip pain, while he and Josue Arana listen to a live Spanish interpretation of the proceedings.
MDF VP Lisa Hollingsworth.
Tyrese Ford presents an argument beside Joshua Brown.
Another good guys bad guys story that is of very little importance. Who said the word was littered with saints?