Wait a minute. That's not a 74-year-old man, right? Video surveillance footage of "State Marshall Brian Hobart" delivering an eviction notice in February at 167 West St.
State Marshal Brian Hobart showed up to a West Street three-family house on Feb. 23 to deliver an eviction notice to a family of renters with an expired lease.
At least, that’s what Hobart attested had happened in a court-filed document.
Surveillance images from a first-floor camera at that Hill property tell a different story.
Those photos show someone other than Hobart taping the Notice to Quit on the front door of the three-family house at 167 West St. on Feb. 25 — which was two days after Hobart said he himself had delivered the move-out-or-get-evicted notice at that location.
The Florida-based landlord that owns 167 West has subsequently withdrawn the eviction case. The tenants in question have moved to Bridgeport after failing to find an affordable rental that would let them stay in New Haven.
Hobart’s misrepresentation of his role in the eviction may still land him in some professional hot water, thanks to a complaint that New Haven Legal Assistance Association (NHLAA) attorney Richard Hine, Jr. has filed against Hobart with the State Marshal Commission. That’s the state body that oversees training requirements, professional standards, and discipline for the sworn officers charged with serving legal notices to tenants at the start of the eviction process and physically removing them and their belongings at the end.
167 West St.
In his March 29 complaint, Hine, who also represented ex-West Street tenant German Vega Rodriguez and his family in their now-dropped eviction case, wrote that “Brian Hobart did falsely attest that he personally served” the West Street renters with a Notice to Quit on Feb. 23 “by leaving it at their usual place of abode.”
Date- and time-stamped video camera footage from that property shows that the notice to quit was actually served on Feb. 25, “two days after Mr. Hobart attested service was made in the Return of Service filed with the Superior Court of Connecticut.”
Hine wrote that, to the best of his knowledge, Hobart is approximately 74 years old. The person who actually delivered the eviction notice at 167 West St. on Feb. 25, Hine wrote, “does not appear to be a 74-year-old male.”
“From the evidence obtained by counsel and attached to this complaint, Mr. Hobart neither served the Notice to Quit on February 23, 2023, as he attested, nor did he personally serve said notice, as he also attested,” Hine continued.
Hine described Hobart’s behavior as in violation of the standards of conduct of being a state marshal, and as falling under the purview of the commission.
State Marshal: Injury, "Lapse Of Judgment"
Jay Dunn photo
Hobart (left) as pictured in a June 2022 Waterbury Republican-American article.
On April 24, Hobart admitted that indeed he was not the one who dropped off the eviction notice at 167 West St.
“While it is not an excuse, I did not personally place that NTQ [notice to quit] at the door,” he wrote in a letter to the commission in response to Hine’s complaint. “The day prior, I had taken a fall walking into my house. While thankfully not serious, I was quite bruised and experiencing pain in my ribs and tailbone. Getting in and out of the car was painful and going up the stairs was a painfully slow process for a few days.”
“In hindsight, seeing that it was a NTQ and could have been served by any indifferent person, I should have had him sign his own return of service,” he continued. “I sincerely regret this lapse of judgment and apologize for any issues this may have caused.”
Legal Aid: Bad Process Has Real Consequences
Legal aid attorney Richard Hine, Jr.
On May 10, Hine followed up with a second letter to the State Marshal Commission – responding to Hobart’s admission, raising further questions about the marshal’s actions, and explaining why these violations matter to the tenants at the other end of the eviction notice.
Hine wrote that Hobart’s admission that he did not personally serve the notice to quit in this case is “appreciated.” He also recognized Hobart’s alleged suffering of an injury “in the days prior to the actual service of the NTQ.”
And yet, he continued, Hobart is still in violation of a number of state agency regulations — and potentially in violation of state statute 53a-157b “for his, now admitted, false attestation in his Return of Service submitted to the Superior Court of Connecticut.”
Hine underscored the consequences for the tenants of actually receiving a notice to quit two days after the court’s official record of when it was delivered.
Documenting an accurate date as to when a notice to quit is served is so important, Hine said, because a notice to quit must allow a tenant at least three full days to vacate the premises.
“In this case, the tenants were actually served on February 25, 2023, depriving them of the full three days to vacate the premises if they chose to do so.”
Hobart’s return of service also made it appear to the court that the tenants were served with a valid notice to quit, and that the eviction lawsuit could therefore proceed. If the court knew that the notice to quit had actually been served on Feb. 25, he wrote, that would have rendered the eviction case invalid.
“Were it not for a ring camera detailing the actual date of service, Mr. Hobart’s false attestation in the Return of Service would have deprived the tenants of their right to dismiss the summary process action against them, and could have resulted in an unwarranted eviction,” Hine wrote. “As it actually occurred, the false Return of Service still allowed the tenant’s landlord to file a summary process action against the tenants, resulting in the tenants having a pending eviction action on their records — viewable by future landlords — for one year. The mere filing of a summary process case against a tenant can have a negative impact on their ability to find and secure future rental housing.”
“Despite his apology, Mr. Hobart still violated the standards of conduct and should be disciplined accordingly,” Hine concluded. “The stroke of a pen can have a massive impact on the lives of tenants. The false attestation in a Return of Service by a State Marshal can deprive a tenant of both their due process right and home. This is a serious matter and should be treated as such.”
It’s now up to the State Marshal Commission to decide whether or not to take Hine’s complaint up for a hearing and issue a suspension or some other form of discipline. Hobart did not respond to phone message and email requests for comment left at his Waterbury office by the publication time of this article.
Tenant: New Landlord Rushed Us Out
German Vega Rodriguez.
In a Thursday afternoon phone interview from his family’s apartment in Bridgeport, German Vega Rodriguez spoke about just how challenging a time this year has been for him and his family because of the eviction case. He also spoke about just how frustrated he is with the lack of communication from his ex-West Street landlords, who promptly moved to kick him out after buying the property earlier this year.
Rodriguez, who was born and raised in Puerto Rico, said that he and his mom and two brothers lived in the second-floor apartment at 167 West St. for two years.
At the time, the owner of the property was a man named Louis St. George. “Our previous landlord was a nice guy. He helped us out when no other landlord wanted to. He gave us an apartment” and rented it out at $1,000 per month, on a month to month basis, Rodriguez said.
When St. George died in 2022, he said, his kids decided to sell the property. According to the city land records database, on Jan. 24, a holding company controlled by local landlord Shneor Edelkopf bought 167 West St. for $244,000 from the St. George Living Trust. On Feb. 8, Edelkopf’s company then flipped the property for $310,000 to CT 167 West LLC, a holding company controlled by Eliezer Rooz of Brooklyn, David Dvash of Deerfield Beach, Florida, and Yehuda Afergan of Hollywood, Florida. (The property’s current owners could not be reached for comment by the publication time of this article.)
“These new owners who bought it now, horrible people,” Rodriguez said. He said they at first told him and his family they didn’t want to evict anyone. Then they said they wanted to remodel the apartment and Rodriguez’s family had to move out. Then they said Rodriguez and his mom and two brothers were too many people to be living in the apartment they were in. They offered them another local apartment they owned — at a rent of $1,800 per month.
“We said we can’t” afford a bump in rent from $1,000 to $1,800 per month, he recalled. “That’s out of our budget. We have bills to pay, medication, diets, clothes, transportation.”
Then the new landlords filed an eviction — the very one that Hobart told the court he had delivered a notice to quit for.
“At no moment did they reach out to talk to us,” Rodriguez said, to give him and his family some time, even just 30 days, to find a new place to live. “We had to move out real fast, real quickly.”
His family wound up finding an apartment they could afford in Bridgeport that they could move into on April 1. It’s a quiet area, he said, but “it’s never going to be the same place as New Haven. It was a sacrifice that had to be made. I wish they didn’t kick us out or drag us to court.”
What would have made the whole process just a little bit better, he said, would have been having the new landlords “sitting down with us and talking with us like normal people.”
Rodriguez said he’d like to move back to New Haven some day, but “right now New Haven is way too expensive.”
Asked for his thoughts on the complaint against Hobart, Rodriguez said he agreed with Hine’s filing before the State Marshal Commission. Hobart shouldn’t have told the court he was the one who served the notice if it wasn’t him, he said. Plus, he and his family never had any piece of paper handed directly to them for the eviction case. Rather, whoever it was who left the eviction paper for their second-floor apartment just taped it to the front door on the first floor of the house and ran away.
See below for other recent stories about New Haven evictions:
• Investor Tries Evictions First, Repairs Later
• Eviction Fallout Follows Ex-Newhallville Family
• Judge Rejects Newhallville Eviction
• Landlord’s Court No-Show Debated In Eviction
• Lenox Landlord Prevents Sheffield Eviction
• Senior Dodges 50-Cent Eviction
• Landlord Prevails After Eviction-Paper Delivery Debate
• Sunset Ridge Becomes Eviction Central
• Eviction OK’d After Restaurant Shutters
• Eviction OK’d After“Lapse,” Rent Debate
• Mandy Leads Pack In Eviction Filings
• Eviction“Answers” Reveal Renters’ Struggles
• Eviction Suit Caps Tenant’s Tough Run
• Investor Skips Hello, Starts Evictions
• Eviction Deal Drops $1 Ruling Appeal
• Judge’s $1 Award Tests Eviction Rule
• Court Case Q: Which“Nuisances” Merit Eviction?
• “Or” Evictions OK’d
• Fair Rent: Dog’ll Cost You $150
• Rent Trumps Repairs In Elliot Street Eviction
• Though Sympathetic, Judge Blocks Eviction
• Family Feuds Fill Eviction Court
• 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
Disgraceful. The marshal should retire or be fired immediately.