Migrant Workers’ Eviction Stopped, For Now

A landlord has to start all over again if he still wants to evict two of the Guatemalan temporary workers he brought to Fair Haven to work at his painting company.

Judge Walter Spader issued that decision on Monday following a January trial that brought to light allegations of labor exploitation by local contractor MDF Painting and Powerwashing.

MDF founder Mark DeFrancesco, alongside co-landlord Lauren DeFrancesco, had sought to evict two former MDF employees — Edgar Becerra and Josue Mauricio Arana — from a three-family house at 200 Peck St.

DeFrancesco’s company had originally recruited Becerra and Arana from Guatemala, sponsoring their temporary work visas and putting them up in a crowded house with other migrant workers in order to pay them $16 an hour as painters.

Then, according to Becerra and legal aid attorney Tyrese Ford, the company fired him after he sustained severe injuries while on the job. And when Becerra filed a worker’s compensation case, they filed an eviction against him.

Ford represented only Becerra, and not Arana, but said that similar events had affected Arana. DeFrancesco and his lawyer, Joshua Brown, denied all of these claims.

Ford said on Monday that the decision allows the tenants ​“to stay in a safe and warm environment as they seek justice through their worker’s compensation case.”

Ford added that ​“the landlord can still use other causes of action to bring an eviction” — but that if another eviction notice comes, the tenants plan on continuing to defend their case.

Judge: Lease Shouldn't Involve Guesswork

DeFrancesco testified in court that the tenants lived in the house on the basis of a weekly, oral lease lasting from each Sunday to each Saturday.

But in his decision, Spader questioned whether such a lease really ever existed, citing inconsistencies in the landlord’s side of the story.

For instance, echoing an argument that Ford had presented in court, Spader wrote that if the oral lease indeed began every Sunday, then the date of the eviction notice would likely have been invalid. That’s because it would have been served within the mandatory grace period for unpaid rent (unless it applied to the previous week).

“Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, a Court should not be guessing at the terms of a lease agreement,” Spader wrote. 

He added later in the opinion, ​“The court cannot find that the plaintiffs have set forth in a credible manner what the essential terms of the oral week-to-week agreement between the parties was.”

The landlord’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment in time for this story.