It’s difficult to believe, but an eviction procedure that should have taken a few weeks to complete and 15 minutes of court time to finally adjudicate has now taken the state transportation agency Caltrans more than four years and numerous hearings to process — and it’s not over yet.
Whatever Glendale Superior Court Judge John Doyle rules Friday in the case of Caltrans v. renter Don Jones, the decision likely will not prevent an almost guaranteed appeal from either side. At this point, no outcome could justify the dozens, if not hundreds, of hours spent by attorneys and administrators for the state on what will be a fourth court appearance, not to mention the time and personnel needed to write myriad memos and legal documents related to the case or the untold hours spent on depositions provided by both sides in the dispute.
And why — with recent revelations of the wholesale looting of the city treasury in Bell and other wasteful government agencies only now coming to light — is Caltrans, well-known as one of the state’s most wasteful agencies as well as its biggest landowner and worst slumlord, using all of these valuable taxpayer-funded resources, staff hours and expensive attorneys to get rid of this lone tenant and his wife?
No, Jones hasn’t killed anyone, although the way attorneys for Caltrans have exaggerated charges against him with every new court filing one might think he did. Nor did Jones ever fail to pay rent on his two-story Madeline Drive home. Incredibly, each time Caltrans tried to evict Jones, he paid the rent, which Caltrans then accepted, which nullified the eviction proceedings and forced Caltrans to refile its eviction lawsuit.
Jones, in fact, is a political agitator and a public interest lawyer who has spent much of the past two decades organizing other tenants against Caltrans’ plans to build a connector road from the 710 Freeway to the 210 Freeway in Pasadena — a more than 40-year-old idea that would have meant the razing of Jones’ home and roughly 500 other structures that Caltrans seized through eminent domain in Pasadena, South Pasadena and El Sereno in the early 1960s to make way for a freeway that will likely never be built.
As incredible as it may sound, all of these legal actions, according to all available documentation, have been brought against Jones merely because he told a self-satisfied Caltrans contract worker doing an extremely poor job of making desperately needed and long-requested repairs to his leaking roof and broken gutter to “get the fuck out of my house.” The worker did just that, only hard feelings were exchanged, and nothing more was done or said — until a full two years later. That’s when Caltrans first served Jones and his wife, Gloria Lucio, with eviction papers in relation to that incident.
It’s interesting to note how Caltrans sat on this complaint all that time, because it came about only after the overland connector path was being all but scuttled due to a lack of federal funding and just as another multibillion-dollar idea to connect the two freeways — this time with twin barrel shaped tunnels — was first being introduced to the public. Not surprisingly, Jones was dead set against that proposal, too, as were most others opposed to the freeway connector plan from the start.
Even though Caltrans has allowed Jones’ home to fall into a state of disrepair since the eviction proceedings started in summer 2008, he’s one of the lucky ones. Many other homes being rented in the so-called 710 Corridor are in poor condition or dilapidated. But now that the overland freeway option seems to be no longer in play, many of those homes could be declared surplus and, with a little rehabilitation, fetch handsome fair market prices, but only if there are empty. State law mandates existing renters be offered that home for affordable prices, but that would never happen in Jones’ case if he is evicted.
“I sometimes wake up at three in the morning and I’m in this movie again,” Jones said.
Since the Pasadena Weekly started writing about this case in January 2009, Caltrans officials have been asked to speak about it in every story, but only one — former District Director Doug Failing — ever commented. That was only to say that the eviction was justified. Failing never explained why. Neither did any of the agency’s many lawyers, who have all ducked behind this convenient but nonetheless fallacious idea that they can’t comment on ongoing litigation. Frankly, if we were perpetrating such an injustice at taxpayer expense, we wouldn’t want to talk about it either for fear of law enforcement snooping around in our business, which it seems to us state Attorney General Jerry Brown should start doing in this case.
Jones’ lawyer, David Etezadi, says Caltrans is being “illogical” as well as “capricious and arbitrary” in its treatment of his client. We would add to that vindictive, malicious and politically driven, which, taken together, is no way to be for a supposedly unbiased public agency.
“I just feel bad for Don. How much time and energy and money has he spent on this?” Etezadi asked. “It’s just wrong.”
As for this remark, we could not have said it better ourselves.
Wow. This has to be one of the most biased articles ever published anywhere. Mr. Uhrich, you are full of $+!*.
Whaaa!!! Whaaa!!! Whaaaaa!!! Mr. Jones has been living in one of those Caltrans properties for below market rent, subsidized by the taxpayers. Hopefully, the court will kick his freeloading arse out, and he will have to pay market rent somewhere else.