Invitation Homes, the nation’s largest single-family landlord, has agreed to pay $48 million to settle a handful of allegations, including that it illegally charged undisclosed junk fees, withheld tenant security deposits and engaged in unfair eviction practices.
The settlement was announced Tuesday by the Federal Trade Commission. Among the main allegations made by the FTC was Invitation Homes deceived tenants over the total cost of renting one of its homes.
The company, which owns or manages more than 100,000 homes nationwide, including more than 11,000 in California, did not include mandatory “junk” fees when advertising its rental rates, according to the FTC.
These fees — for things like smart home technology and utility management — at times raised the cost of rent by more than $1,700 a year and were only disclosed when consumers went to sign their lease, the FTC alleged.
By that time, the agency said consumers were in a bind because they had already paid a nonrefundable application fee of up to $55. They may have also forked over $500 to reserve a specific home, which they would only get back if they signed the lease.
Sometimes, consumers weren’t made aware of the junk fees until after they signed the lease and moved in, authorities said.
In addition to junk fees, the FTC alleged Invitation Homes rented out homes that were often in disrepair and systematically withheld security deposits for items that were not the tenant’s responsibility.
Invitation Homes also engaged in several unfair eviction practices, the agency said. Among them, the company told struggling tenants during the pandemic that their only options were to pay, move out or face eviction and failed to inform them of federal eviction protections available at the time, the FTC alleged.
“No American should pay more for rent or be kicked out of their home because of illegal tactics by corporate landlords,” Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina M. Khan said in a statement. “The FTC will continue to use all our tools to protect renters from unlawful business practices.”
In a news release, Invitation Homes said it made no admission of wrongdoing as part of the settlement and described its disclosures and practices as “industry leading.”
“Today’s agreement brings the FTC’s three-year investigation to a close and puts this matter behind the Company, which will, as always, move forward with its continuous efforts to better serve its customers and enhance its practices,” Invitation Homes said in a statement.
The company, which started buying thousands of homes in the wake of the Great Recession, has reached multiple settlements this year.
In July, it agreed to pay nearly $20 million to resolve allegations it made unpermitted renovations across its portfolio in California. In January, it agreed to pay several million to settle allegations it violated the state’s rent cap law.
Under the settlement announced Tuesday, which still must be approved by a judge, consumers would receive refunds and Invitation Homes will be required to include all mandatory monthly fees in its advertised rent.
California will take a major step in its fight to protect children from the ills of social media with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature on a bill to limit the ability of companies to provide “addictive feeds” to minors.
The governor’s office said Newsom on Friday will sign Senate Bill 976, named the Protecting Our Kids From Social Media Addiction Act and introduced by state Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley). The bill was supported by state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and groups such as the Assn. of California School Administrators, Common Sense Media and the California chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Newsom’s wife, First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom, is also outspoken about the links between social media consumption and low self-esteem, depression and anxiety among youth.
The legislation attracted an unusual collection of opponents, including the American Civil Liberties Union of California, Equality California and associations representing giants in the industry that own TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. The California Chamber of Commerce argued that the legislation “unconstitutionally burdens” access to lawful content, setting up the potential for another lawsuit in an ongoing court battle between the state and social media companies over use of the platforms by children.
“Every parent knows the harm social media addiction can inflict on their children — isolation from human contact, stress and anxiety, and endless hours wasted late into the night,” Newsom said. “With this bill, California is helping protect children and teenagers from purposely designed features that feed these destructive habits.”
The bill, which will take effect Jan. 1, 2027, with Newsom’s signature, prohibits internet service and applications from providing “addictive feeds,” defined as media curated based on information gathered on or provided by the user, to minors without parental consent. SB 976 also bans companies from sending notifications to users identified as minors between midnight and 6 a.m. or during the school day from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. unless parents give the OK.
The bill will effectively require companies to make posts from people children know and follow appear in chronological order on their social media feeds instead of in an arrangement to maximize engagement. Proponents of the bill point to warnings from U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and others about a mental health crisis among youths, which studies show is exacerbated by the use of social media.
“As a mother, I’m proud of California’s continued leadership in holding technology companies accountable for their products and ensuring those products are not harmful to children. Thank you to the Governor and Senator Skinner for taking a critical step in protecting children and ensuring their safety is prioritized over companies’ profits,” Siebel Newsom said.
The industry has argued that it’s false to assume that feeds curated by an algorithm are harmful but that a chronological feed is safe. The ACLU also argued that age verification creates potential privacy concerns because it could require the collection of additional user data that could be at risk in a security breach and because it could threaten the 1st Amendment rights of people who cannot verify their age.
Several groups advocating for LGBTQ+ youths suggested the bill could limit youths’ ability to engage on platforms that offer emotional support for their identities, particularly for kids who live in communities that might be hostile to their identity. Giving more control to parents could also potentially result in parents choosing settings that share sensitive information about the child, the groups said.
The bill marks the latest action in a battle between state government and social media companies taking place in the California Legislature and the court system over the use of platforms by children.
In October, Bonta’s office filed a lawsuit with 32 other states against Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, alleging that the company designed apps specifically to addict young users while misleading the public about the adverse effects.
A bill that failed last year in the California Legislature would have made social media companies liable for up to $250,000 in damages if they knowingly promoted features that could harm children. Portions of a 2022 law that sought to require companies to provide privacy protections for children have also been held up in court.
When the federal government closed Castle Air Force Base in Merced County in the 1990s, the dilapidated buildings and vast expanse of aging tarmac left behind seemed more like a liability than an opportunity.
But by 2018, the old runways that once carried B-52 bombers had found a new and unexpected customer: Google, which was testing its experimental self-driving vehicles there, far from the prying eyes of Silicon Valley.
At the urging of then-state Assemblyman Adam Gray, California gave Merced County $6.5 million that year to expand the self-driving testing program at the old base.
A few years later, Gray invested there, too.
In 2022, a company in which Gray is a minority owner bought four apartment buildings on the former base from Merced County, according to a Times review of business filings, property records and Gray’s financial disclosures. Gray’s link to the real estate deal has not been previously reported.
The sale closed for $600,000 in August 2022, records show, and the property is now valued at more than $2.5 million. Gray’s representatives said that the investment shows his interest in providing affordable housing, and that renovations have been so costly that he has yet to make money.
Nonetheless, the real estate deal in rural Atwater, Calif., has come under scrutiny as Gray, a Democrat, fights to unseat first-term Rep. John Duarte (R-Modesto). The race in California’s 13th Congressional District is a bitter rematch of 2022, when Duarte beat Gray by the second-closest margin in the nation: 564 votes.
The race is among the handful of contests across the U.S. that are seen as pivotal in determining which party controls Congress after the November election.
Republicans have questioned the timing of Gray’s purchase, which closed four months before he left the Legislature and less than a year before California officials awarded nearly $50 million in new funding for the site. The 2023 grant from the California State Transportation Agency helped Merced County build out a rail hub on the base site to handle cargo loaded onto trains from the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.
“Gray’s self-serving scheme reveals his true colors as a Sacramento politician who lines his own pockets at the expense of Valley families’ trust and hard-earned dollars,” said Ben Petersen, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, which works to elect Republicans to the House of Representatives.
Petersen accused Gray of “mixing taxpayer money with personal profit” and said the apartment deal should be investigated.
Far from Gray lining his pockets, his campaign and company said, the old Castle Air Force Base apartments have required so much renovation that Gray has actually lost money.
Ben Rodriguez, Gray’s campaign manager, said the allegations were false and “intended to distract voters from John Duarte’s disastrous record.”
“While Adam Gray has brought back real help for families across this district, Duarte is making things worse for families every day he spends in Congress,” Rodriguez said.
Gray is a minority owner in Gemenii LLC, the company that owns the apartment complex at the base. Gemenii is a subsidiary of a family-owned residential and commercial construction company of which Gray is also a member, the firm said.
Gray learned about the Castle Air Force Base apartments about six months before the sale, when “partners that own other properties at Castle” approached him with the idea of renovating the 80-unit complex to provide affordable housing, the company said.
The four spartan buildings, once barracks for airmen, were in disrepair, and three were vacant. Merced County had classified the property as surplus and assessed the buildings and the 5.3 acres of land beneath them at $400,000 to $600,000, the company said.
When the county received “no other competitive offers,” the firm said, Merced County sold the buildings for $600,000.
The firm has since spent millions on renovations, “exactly as intended by Merced County when the property was sold in an open and public sale process,” company attorney Richard Marchini said in a written statement.
Gray was still representing the Modesto area in the state Assembly when the sale closed.
A Google Waymo autonomous vehicle navigates the roads inside the company’s facility on the property of the former Castle Air Force Base, which is now a municipal airport, in Atwater, Calif. in 2017.
(San Francisco Chronicle / Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images )
Gray has a 30% stake in the firm that owns the apartments, the company said. His name does not appear in the company’s state business filings.
Gray first disclosed his investment in his 2022 Form 700, the financial disclosure that California lawmakers are required to file annually with state ethics officials.
Government experts said it did not appear that Gray’s real estate deal broke the law.
But, they said, elected officials who invest in real estate must be aware of the appearance of conflicts of interest, particularly when investing in their districts.
Dan Schnur, the former head of the California Fair Political Practices Commission, said that Gray’s real estate investment at the site being bookended by the award of taxpayer funds seemed “suspicious.”
“Everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt, but the best way to receive the benefit of the doubt is to earn it,” Schnur said. “A public servant ought to be aware of how these things might be perceived.”
After Gray lost his run for Congress in 2022, he filed a federal financial disclosure with the House in which he did not disclose the real estate investment or his stake in the LLC that owns the buildings.
His campaign said that Gray did not mention the apartment complex investment because there was no revenue to report, but that he disclosed his position in the parent company.
In a new filing made public this month, for Gray’s second run for Congress, he said he received between $100,000 and $1 million from the LLC that owns the apartments in 2023, and between $50,000 and $100,000 in the first half of 2024.
Those figures represent the company’s total revenue, rather than Gray’s, and were listed “out of an abundance of caution,” the campaign said.
Gray has not received any income from the business in 2023 or 2024, the campaign said, and the investment has not made a profit.
The former air base, now called Castle Commerce Center, covers about 3 square miles. It’s home to miles of empty roads, as well as dozens of private and government tenants, including a federal prison, a post office, Merced’s commercial airport and Waymo, Google’s autonomous vehicle company.
After Gray helped secure the $6.5-million grant for the self-driving car testing site in 2018, Merced County converted vast stretches of unused tarmac at the base into a testing hub. There are now full intersections with traffic lights and signage and a 2.2-mile test freeway with on- and off-ramps where vehicles can practice driving in urban environments.
The site, operated by an Ohio-based company, has hosted two dozen companies from Silicon Valley and major automotive firms.
In the midst of that boom, Merced County’s supervisors continued selling portions of the base as surplus land. That included the 5.3-acre site and the 80-unit apartment complex, which the board sold on a 4-0 vote in May 2022 to Gemenii.
At the time of the sale, the land was valued at $465,000, and the structures were valued at $135,000, according to tax records provided by the company.
The company took out an $885,000, 30-year mortgage at the end of 2022, and a $3-million, 15-year mortgage in June of this year, to finance renovations at the building, the company said.
Two buildings have been gutted and renovated so far, a process that included asbestos removal and replacing windows and appliances, the company said.
The renovated buildings are now valued at more than $2 million, while the underlying land value has risen by $9,300, according to tax bills provided by the company.
The increase in value is “directly connected to the material financial efforts of Gemenii to revitalize the property,” the firm said. Any developments at the air base site, the company said, “have had no impact on the property’s value.”
An Orange County man was sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison Friday after admitting he duped three companies out of $3 million for protective gloves that were promised but never delivered during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In addition to the 87-month sentence, Christopher John Badsey, 63, of Lake Forest was ordered to pay $1.94 million in restitution after pleading guilty to four counts of wire fraud.
In June and July 2020 — when personal protective equipment such as masks, gloves and hand sanitizer were in short supply — Badsey claimed his Irvine-based company, First Defense International Security Services Corp., could provide millions of boxes of nitrile gloves, according to court documents.
Badsey entered into contracts to sell gloves to three other companies, court documents say, and required each to deposit around $1 million before they could inspect the promised goods.
The companies wired a total of $3.2 million to accounts Badsey, his company or an unnamed co-schemer controlled, according to court documents.
However, prosecutors say Badsey didn’t have the gloves, and concocted elaborate excuses whenever his clients inquired about delivery. His false stories included “absurd claims that government agents were blocking access to his warehouse,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
Meanwhile, he used the deposit money to bankroll expensive purchases, authorities say, including a yacht, a pontoon boat, two Mercedes-Benz automobiles, two Ford pickup trucks, a recreation vehicle, a tractor, three ATVs and fishing equipment.
He has forfeited all titles from items purchased with the pilfered funds, along with $58,923 in cash.
Court documents show that Badsey — who previously pleaded guilty to three gun misdemeanors, including gross negligent discharge of a firearm, in November 2016 — had initially argued for a much leaner sentence: one year and one day, a three-year term of supervised release and a special assessment of $400.
The U.S. Department of Justice on Friday sued a major real estate firm, alleging the company’s algorithmic software enables landlords across the country to set rent at artificially high rates.
The lawsuit, joined by several states including California, focuses on software from Texas-based company RealPage. The software is used by many landlords to set rent prices for both vacant units and renewal rates for existing tenants.
In a truly competitive market, authorities said, property owners would be forced to compete with each other, helping to drive down rental costs for Americans.
However, according to the lawsuit, RealPage enabled the opposite.
When becoming a client, supposedly competing landlords share nonpublic information — such as occupancy and rents on executed leases — with RealPage, which then uses that data to recommend rents at individual properties.
“As Americans struggle to afford housing, RealPage is making it easier for landlords to coordinate to increase rents,” Assistant Atty. General Jonathan Kanter said in a statement.
RealPage did not immediately return a request for comment.
The company previously called similar allegations false and misleading, saying clients can decline its recommendations, which at times include dropping rent.
But in its complaint, the Justice Department pointed to instances where RealPage described its software as a tool for maximizing rent and outperforming the market. Authorities also alleged the company made it more difficult for landlords to reject its recommendations than accept them.
“There is greater good in everybody succeeding versus essentially trying to compete against one another in a way that actually keeps the entire industry down,” a RealPage executive said, according to the lawsuit.
At another point, RealPage described its tools as ensuring landlords are “driving every possible opportunity to increase price even in the most downward trending or unexpected conditions,” the complaint says.
Antitrust enforcement has been a focus of the Biden administration. The Justice Department has sued major companies such as Google and Apple, alleged they engaged in anticompetitive behavior.
Vice President Kamala Harris has also criticized the use of rent-setting algorithms while running for president.
In a statement, Atty. Gen. Merrick B. Garland said the Justice Department would continue to aggressively enforce antitrust laws.
“Americans should not have to pay more in rent because a company has found a new way to scheme with landlords to break the law,” Garland said.
A controversial bill that seeks to protect Californians from artificial intelligence-driven catastrophes has caused uproar in the tech industry. This week, the legislation passed a key committee but with amendments to make it more palatable to Silicon Valley.
SB 1047, from state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), is set to go to the state Assembly floor later this month. If it passes the Legislature, Gov. Gavin Newsom will have to decide whether to sign or veto the groundbreaking legislation.
The bill’s backers say it will create guardrails to prevent rapidly advancing AI models from causing disastrous incidents, such as shutting down the power grid without warning. They worry that the technology is developing faster than its human creators can control.
Lawmakers aim to incentive developers to handle the technology responsibly and empower the state’s attorney general to impose penalties in the event of imminent threat or harm. The legislation also requires developers to be able to turn off the AI models they control directly if things go awry.
But some tech companies, such as Facebook owner Meta Platforms, and politicians including influential U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), say the bill would stifle innovation. Some critics say it focuses on apocalyptic, far-off scenarios, rather than the more immediate concerns such as privacy and misinformation, though there are other bills that address these matters.
SB 1047 is one of roughly 50 AI-related bills that have been brought up in the state Legislature, as worries have grown about the technology’s effects on jobs, disinformation and public safety. As politicians work to create new laws to put guardrails on the fast-growing industry, some companies and talent are suing AI companies in hopes that courts can set ground rules.
Wiener, who represents San Francisco — the home of AI startups OpenAI and Anthropic — has been in the middle of the debate.
On Thursday, he made significant changes to his bill that some believe weaken the legislation while making it more likely for the Assembly to pass.
The amendments removed a perjury penalty from the bill and changed the legal standard for developers regarding the safety of their advanced AI models.
Additionally, a plan to create a new government entity, which would have been called the Frontier Model Division, is no longer in the works. Under the original text, the bill would have required developers to submit their safety measures to the newly created division. In the new version, developers would submit those safety measures to the attorney general.
“I do think some of those changes might make it more likely to pass,” said Christian Grose, a USC political science and public policy professor.
Eight California House members — Khanna, Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), Anna G. Eshoo (D-Menlo Park), Scott Peters (D-San Diego), Tony Cárdenas (D-Pacoima), Ami Bera (D-Elk Grove), Nanette Diaz Barragan (D-San Pedro) and Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) — wrote a letter to Newsom on Thursday encouraging him to veto the bill if it passes the state Assembly.
“[Wiener] really is cross pressured in San Francisco between people who are experts in this area, who have been telling him and others in California that AI can be dangerous if we don’t regulate it and then those whose paychecks, their cutting edge research, is from AI,” Grose said. “This could be a real flash point for him, both pro and con, for his career.”
Some tech giants say they are open to regulation but disagree with Wiener’s approach.
“We are aligned with the way (Wiener) describes the bill and the goals that he has, but we remain concerned about the impact of the bill on AI innovation, particularly in California, and particularly on open source innovation,” Kevin McKinley, Meta’s state policy manager, said in a meeting with L.A. Times editorial board members last week.
Meta is one of the companies with a collection of open source AI models called Llama, which allows developers to build on top of it for their own products. Meta released Llama 3 in April and there have already been 20 million downloads, the tech giant said.
Meta declined to discuss the new amendments. Last week, McKinley said SB 1047 is “actually a really hard bill to red line and fix.”
A spokesperson for Newsom said his office does not typically comment on pending legislation.
“The Governor will evaluate this bill on its merits should it reach his desk,” spokesperson Izzy Gardon wrote in an email.
San Francisco AI startup Anthropic, which is known for its AI assistant Claude, signaled it could support the bill if it was amended. In a July 23 letter to Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), Anthropic’s state and local policy lead Hank Dempsey proposed changes including shifting the bill to focus on holding companies responsible for causing catastrophes rather than pre-harm enforcement.
Wiener said the amendments took Anthropic’s concerns into account.
“We can advance both innovation and safety,” Wiener said in a statement. “The two are not mutually exclusive.”
It is unclear whether the amendments will change Anthropic’s position on the bill. On Thursday, Anthropic said in a statement that it would review the new “bill language as it becomes available.”
Russell Wald, deputy director at Stanford University’s HAI, which aims to advance AI research and policy, said he still opposes the bill.
“Recent amendments appear to be more about optics than substance,” Wald said in a statement. “It looks less controversial to appease a couple of leading AI companies but does little to address real concerns from academic institutions and open-source communities.”
It is a fine balance for lawmakers that are trying to weigh concerns about AI while also supporting the state’s tech sector.
“What a lot of us are trying to do is figure out a regulatory environment that allows for some of those guardrails to exist while not stifling innovation and the economic growth that comes with AI,” Wicks said after Thursday’s committee meeting.
Times staff writer Anabel Sosa contributed to this report.
A Los Angeles County jury found businesses that make or distribute engineered stone at fault Wednesday for the suffering of a 34-year-old stonecutter afflicted with an incurable disease.
In a decision watched closely by silicosis experts and the stone industry, jurors deliberating at Stanley Mosk Courthouse in downtown L.A. decided largely in favor of Gustavo Reyes Gonzalez, who was diagnosed with silicosis and had to undergo a double lung transplant after years of cutting engineered stone countertops.
The decision followed deliberations that spanned five days of the multi-week trial. Before the verdict, the two sides in the case had agreed that economic losses for Reyes Gonzalez exceeded $8 million.
The jury decided that other damages — which could include physical pain, mental suffering and emotional distress — amounted to more than $44 million. However, because the jury did not deem the defendants wholly responsible for those damages, they will not be collectively liable for the full amount.
It concluded that Caesarstone USA bore 15% of the responsibility, Cambria 10% and Color Marble 2.5%. The court will ultimately determine how much each defendant must pay.
Reyes Gonzalez is among scores of California countertop cutters who have sued companies like Caesarstone and Cambria after falling ill with silicosis, which is caused by inhaling tiny particles of crystalline silica.
His case was the first to go to trial, according to his attorneys. It tested whether companies that manufacture or distribute slabs of artificial stone, commonly marketed as quartz, could be held responsible for the ravages of silicosis, an ancient disease now emerging among countertop cutters barely in middle age.
Scientists have linked the eruption of silicosis cases among stonecutters to the booming popularity of engineered stone, which is typically much higher in lung-scarring silica than natural stone such as granite or marble. In California, more than a dozen countertop cutters have died of silicosis in recent years. In a recent study of the emerging cases and fatalities, researchers found the median age at death was 46.
Attorneys for Reyes Gonzalez argued that the companies had failed to provide sufficient warning about the dangers of cutting the slabs and that the risks far outweighed the benefits of their products. Gilbert Purcell, one of his lawyers, told the jury that engineered stone has “nasty, nasty risks” that had not been properly disclosed.
“A company should never needlessly cause risk to others,” Purcell said, “and that’s what they did.”
For instance, Purcell argued, Cambria had failed for a decade and a half to warn that silica dust could be an invisible hazard. How can workers avoid breathing dust, he argued, “when you can’t even know you’re breathing it because it’s invisible?”
A cloud of dust envelops a countertop fabricator cutting engineered stone at a Sun Valley shop last year.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Lawyers representing companies that make or distribute engineered stone argued that the operators of the Orange County workshops where Reyes Gonzalez worked were to blame. If they had used the proper protections, he would not have gotten silicosis, said Peter Strotz, an attorney representing Caesarstone USA.
“They knew what they had to do. They didn’t do it. … Worst of all, they deceived Mr. Reyes Gonzalez. They led him to believe he would be protected when he was not,” Strotz told the jury. He argued Caesarstone USA had done its part by providing safety information and should not be blamed for the “misuse” of its products.
Cambria attorney Lindsay Weiss said the company had provided warnings, including labels on the slabs themselves, and offered free training to the “fabricators” who cut, grind and polish the material to shape it into countertops.
She held up a sample of its quartz surfacing material to the jury, telling them it was safe. “The problem is when people don’t follow the law when they handle this product,” Weiss said.
And Color Marble, a distributor, argued there was no proof that Reyes Gonzalez had cut or polished slabs sold by its company. The jury found Color Marble liable for negligence — as it did Caesarstone USA and Cambria — but did not deem it liable for other claims for product liability as it had for those firms.
The lawsuit initially targeted a long list of companies, but all but three — Caesarstone USA, Cambria and Color Marble — were dismissed or settled before the jury reached a verdict. Attorney James Nevin, who represents Reyes Gonzalez, said most had “resolved the case pursuant to confidential agreements.”
Strotz, representing Caesarstone USA, declined to comment on the verdict.
Weiss said her client, Cambria, disagreed with the decision. “We think this is not a product issue. It’s a workplace safety issue,” she said. “This is handled safely every single day.”
Raphael Metzger, one of the attorneys representing Reyes Gonzalez, called the decision “a win for public health and occupational safety.”
He grew emotional as he praised the jurors for their work. “Only in America,” he said, “can Hispanic immigrants come here and receive justice — as they have.”
The trial, which stretched more than a month, spotlighted the dangers facing workers like Reyes Gonzalez, who testified that he came to the U.S. from the Mexican state of Veracruz as a teenager to escape poverty. For years, he worked from morning to evening cutting slabs for countertops.
Dust was rampant in the Orange County workshops where he labored, Reyes Gonzalez testified, at times so much that it looked like fog. His mask would grow filthy. Even when he used water while cutting, he said, “a lot of dust would come off” when the liquid had dried.
His wife, Wendy Torres Hernandez, said that when Reyes Gonzalez got his diagnosis, he called her crying. “He was told that there was no cure for it. There was nothing that he could do,” she said.
“I told him we would figure something out to help him, because I couldn’t just let him die,” she testified. Despondent, he told her “that he was going to start planning for his funeral.”
Reyes Gonzalez ultimately became so sick that both his lungs needed to be replaced in a transplant. The surgery may afford him only six more years to live before he needs another set of transplanted lungs — and a doctor testified that if that did happen, he would be unlikely to get a third transplant because of his age.
He will have to take a host of medications and carefully monitor his health until he dies. Because of the medicines he takes, Reyes Gonzalez said he cannot have children, which pains him because his wife adores them. Doctors might find a way for them in the future, he said, but cannot guarantee it.
Lawyers for Caesarstone and other companies focused much of their questioning on members of the Silverio family, who paid Reyes Gonzalez for his work in a string of Orange County workshops. When a co-worker named Guillermo Mora de los Santos took the stand, a defense attorney questioned him about whether the Silverio shops had ever provided trainings on workplace safety or had any “silica control program.”
Mora de los Santos said no. “We didn’t know about that — about that disease,” he said about silicosis.
Weiss, representing Cambria, stressed to the jury that Reyes Gonzalez had described sweeping up dry dust and using compressed air to clean — practices that send dust into the air — and that he wasn’t provided with an adequate mask. Nor was water used properly, she said.
In court, one of the Silverios denied having seen safety information from Caesarstone that included a video on silicosis risks, despite having signed a form saying he had received such materials.
Purcell, in his closing remarks, argued that whatever the Silverios had done or not done could not absolve the defendants. “This chain of safety starts with them.”
In its verdict, the jury had the opportunity to assign a percentage of the total responsibility to “others” besides Reyes Gonzalez and the engineered stone companies. Jurors assigned 70% to “others” and 2.5% to Reyes Gonzalez himself.
The Silica Safety Coalition, an industry group that maintains that engineered stone can and should be cut safely, said the 70% fault attributed to “others” was an acknowledgment of the unsafe practices at his workplace.
“We think the California jury was wrong to blame the slab suppliers for any of Mr. Reyes-Gonzalez’s injuries from his unsafe workplace condition, and we anticipate the verdict will be appealed by one or more parties,” the coalition said in a statement.
Juror Laura Miller, who said she disagreed with most of her fellow jurors in finding the companies liable, said after the verdict that she felt the blame lay with the Silverios. To reach their decisions in the civil case, at least nine of 12 jurors had to agree on the verdicts.
“The employer was using no precautions,” Miller said.
Nevin, one of Reyes Gonzalez’s lawyers, said in a statement that the jury had “rightly rejected” efforts to blame “unsophisticated hirers” who had not been warned of the dangers themselves.
His firm, Brayton Purcell LLP, now represents more than 150 countertop cutters with silicosis who labored at more than 350 shops, it said in a statement. “The problem is the products, not the shops.”
Much of the court case revolved around the kinds of measures needed to protect workers from silica dust from engineered stone, as a string of experts testified about the risks of cutting such slabs. Among them was Dr. Kenneth Rosenman, who testified that Reyes Gonzalez got silicosis despite having used some tools that dispense water because they were “not sufficiently protective.”
“They do not lower the dust level low enough to prevent this severe disease,” said Rosenman, chief of the division of occupational and environmental medicine at Michigan State University.
Another witness for the plaintiff, industrial hygienist Stephen Petty, said that N95 masks would be “bottom of the barrel” protection for engineered stone dust. Even the most protective respirators, which use a tank of clean air, are not a “permanent solution” because workers tend to adjust them, breaking the seal, he said.
Defense attorneys turned to other witnesses, including industrial hygienist Brian Daly, who said that engineered stone can be cut and polished safely. Reyes Gonzalez “would not have developed silicosis had his employer had a program that was protective” and followed workplace safety regulations, Daly testified.
Judge William F. Fahey had excluded testimony that attorneys representing Reyes Gonzalez had sought from Georgia Tech scientist Jenny Houlroyd, saying her study was based on data that were not provided to the court, among other issues. Her analysis had concluded that it wasn’t economically feasible to employ the measures needed to safely cut engineered stone, especially for small workshops.
Artificial stone is “a uniquely toxic product,” and neither “wet methods” nor wearing a mask would make it safe to cut and grind, Houlroyd wrote in a prepared list of her opinions.
After more than a month of deliberation, a Kern County Superior Court judge has sided with Wonderful Co. and issued a preliminary injunction that will temporarily halt a contentious bargaining process between the agricultural giant and the state’s largest farmworker union.
In a ruling issued Thursday, Judge Bernard C. Barmann said Wonderful “was likely to prevail” in its legal challenge to the state’s relatively new system for organizing farmworkers and faced irreparable harm if the United Farm Workers is allowed to unionize the company’s nursery workers before the case is decided.
“The court finds that the public interest weighs in favor of preliminary injunctive relief given the constitutional rights at stake in this matter,” Barmann wrote in the 21-page decision. Wonderful “has met its burden that a preliminary injunction should issue until the matter may be heard fully on the merits.”
Wonderful, the $6-billion agricultural powerhouse owned by Stewart and Lynda Resnick, sued the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board in May, challenging the constitutionality of the state’s so-called card-check system, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law in 2022. Under its provisions, a union can organize farmworkers by inviting them to sign authorization cards at off-site meetings, without notifying an employer, rather than voting by secret ballot at a designated polling place.
Union organizers had pressed for the revised card-check law, contending the secret ballot process left workers fearful of retaliation from their employer.
But Wonderful, whose portfolio includes such well-known brands as FIJI Water and POM Wonderful, alleges in its lawsuit that the law deprives employers of due process on multiple fronts. Among them: forcing a company to enter a collective bargaining agreement even if it has formally appealed the ALRB’s certification of a union vote and presented what it believes is evidence that the voting process was fraudulent.
The temporary injunction marks the latest twist in a tumultuous dispute over the UFW’s unionization campaign at Wonderful Nurseries in Wasco, the nation’s largest grapevine nursery.
In late February, the UFW filed a petition with the labor relations board, asserting that a majority of the 600-plus farmworkers at the nursery had signed authorization cards and asking that the UFW be certified as their union representative.
Within days, Wonderful accused the UFW of having baited farmworkers into signing the authorization cards under the guise of helping them apply for $600 in federal relief for farmworkers who labored during the pandemic. And the company submitted nearly 150 signed declarations from nursery workers saying they had not understood that by signing the cards they were voting to unionize.
The UFW countered that Wonderful had intimidated workers into making false statements and had brought in a labor consultant with a reputation as a union buster to manipulate their emotions in the weeks that followed.
The ALRB acknowledged receiving the worker declarations from Wonderful; nonetheless, the regional director of the labor board moved forward three days later to certify the union’s petition. She has said in subsequent hearings that she felt she had to move quickly under the timeline laid out in the card-check law, and that at the time she did not think the statute authorized her to investigate allegations of misconduct.
Wonderful appealed the ALRB’s certification.
Under the provisions of the card-check law, the UFW’s efforts to bargain with the company on behalf of its nursery workers moved forward, even as Wonderful’s appeal of the certification works its way through the ALRB’s administrative hearing process. The ALRB issued a ruling last week ordering Wonderful to enter into a mandatory mediation process to establish a collective bargaining agreement.
In its lawsuit, filed in May, Wonderful challenges the constitutionality of the card-check system on multiple fronts. Among them: that the company’s due process rights were violated when the labor board moved to certify the UFW’s petition before investigating the company’s allegations that the vote was fraudulent; and more broadly that the card-check system does not have adequate safeguards in place to ensure the veracity of the voting process.
The company asked the judge to halt the unionization effort at its nursery, as well as the ALRB’s administrative hearing process, while the lawsuit moved forward in Kern County court.
In a statement released Thursday evening, Rob Yraceburu, president of Wonderful Nurseries, said the company was “gratified” by the court’s decision to pause the certification process until the constitutionality of the card check law can be “fully and properly considered.”
“In addition,” Yraceburu said, “farmworkers had been wrongly barred from objecting to a union being forced on them, and this ruling states that Wonderful indeed has the standing to fight to ensure those constitutional rights of farmworkers, including their due process and First Amendment rights, are not violated.”
UFW spokesperson Elizabeth Strater countered that the ruling “ignores 89 years of labor law precedent” and indicated the decision to grant the injunction would be appealed.
“There is already a process to address wrongdoing in elections and Wonderful was in the middle of that process. Why does Wonderful want to halt that process and silence workers so their voices are not heard?” Strater said. “It’s very clear Wonderful is determined to use its considerable resources to deny farmworkers their rights.”
In a May 30 filing, the state had urged the court to deny Wonderful’s request for an injunction. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, arguing on behalf of the ALRB, said Wonderful had failed to demonstrate that the card-check law was causing “irreparable harm or any likelihood of deprivation of its rights.” Bonta also argued that the Superior Court lacked jurisdiction in the case.
Santiago Avila-Gomez, executive secretary with the ALRB, said Thursday evening the agency is “reviewing the ruling carefully and won’t have further comment at this time.”
The UFW, meanwhile, is pursuing its own legal action against Wonderful. The union has filed a formal complaint of unfair labor practices with the ALRB, accusing Wonderful of coercing workers into attending “captive audience” meetings to urge employees to reject UFW representation. ALRB General Counsel Julia Montgomery issued a complaint in April, similar to an indictment, alleging Wonderful committed unfair labor practices by unlawfully assisting them in drafting declarations to revoke their authorization cards.
This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative,funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to addressCalifornia’s economic divide.
Federal investigators are ordering the city of Oakland to hand over documents involving a prominent, influential local family who hold a waste management contract with the city, as well as Mayor Sheng Thao and her partner, according to documents reviewed by The Times.
The federal subpoena, issued five days after federal agents raided Thao’s home on June 20, confirms there is a current federal grand jury investigation that appears centered around Cal Waste Solutions Inc.; its owners, members of the Duong family; and their dealings with Oakland city officials, particularly its mayor.
Dated June 25, the eight-page subpoena asks the city to turn over all documents and communications regarding Cal Waste Solutions, all of its employees and representatives, and any documents involving appointments to prominent city posts.
The deadline is Thursday.
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to questions regarding the subpoena.
Federal investigators are also requesting documents related to the 2022 Oakland mayoral election, when Thao was elected as the first Hmong mayor of a major U.S. city.
The subpoena further reveals the possible involvement of Thao’s partner, Andre Jones, in the inquiry. Investigators requested the city turn over calendar entries and records involving meetings for Thao and Jones from June 1 to the present.
Attorneys for Thao declined to comment on the subpoena but said the investigation involving Thao did not involve criminal charges or allegations.
Thao has denied any wrongdoing.
“I can tell you with confidence that this investigation is not about me,” the mayor said in a news conference three days after FBI agents raided her home.
Exactly what the focus of the federal investigation is remains unclear, but the June 25 subpoena offered a slightly wider glimpse into the scope of the federal investigation, the latest scandal to plague the Bay Area city that has recently faced a mayoral recall effort, a growing budget deficit, and concerns about crime that have driven out major businesses.
Shortly after city officials received the subpoena, Oakland’s city attorney directed staff in an email to preserve all records involving Thao, Jones, and the Duong family, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
A spokesperson for the Oakland city attorney’s office confirmed the existence of the memo to staff but in an email declined to provide a copy of it or answer questions about it, referring to the memo as “confidential attorney-client communication between the Oakland City Attorney and the other city of Oakland staff members.”
The federal subpoena, issued by the U.S. attorney’s Northern District of California, requests multiple documents involving the Duong family, including David, Andy, Kristina, Victor and Michael Duong.
For at least five years, the family has been at the center of an investigation involving the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission and the Oakland Public Ethics Commission. The family is accused of using “straw donors” to circumvent legal donation limits and fill the campaign coffers of elected public officials while the family’s companies sought contracts with cities.
The family’s company, Cal Waste Solutions, currently provides recycling services to Oakland.
After the warrants were executed, Cal Waste Solutions officials issued a statement saying they were surprised by the searches and had cooperated with investigators.
“We believe that we have not engaged in or committed any illegal activities and are awaiting the decision of the law enforcement agency,” the company statement read.
A spokesperson for the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
But the state and local inquiry into the family’s dealings with city officials in the area paint a troubling picture.
Court records reveal the Fair Political Practices Commission has been probing political donations made by the family since 2019. The agency alleges that Andy Duong and former business associates used friends and business connections to make political contributions, then reimbursed them with cash to hide the true origin of the money.
“CWS was the true source of at least 93 contributions to multiple local campaign committees,” the court record reads, with the goal being “to curry favor with candidates and provide more access to candidates.”
The agency tracked questionable donations made in Oakland, as well as San Jose and other parts of Santa Clara County, where the family was looking to do business.
The investigation found there had been multiple contributions made to Thao’s campaign in 2018 for City Council, including “seven of which were admitted reimbursements by or on behalf of [Andy] Duong.”
One former associate told investigators, according to court records, he saw Andy Duong pull cash from a drawer in his office at Cal Waste Solutions to reimburse people for donations.
FPPC officials confirmed their inquiry is still ongoing.
Federal officials are also requesting documents involving the city’s declaration of a local emergency on homelessness, and any communication regarding the former Oakland Army Base, a site that had been considered as possible housing for unhoused individuals.
The thief sent an email to the New York Times claiming to be part of a criminal network that targets the dead and elderly, particularly those from Florida and California, the outlet reported Tuesday.
The statement, which was sent in reply to questions about the case, came from an email address listed in court documents related to Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC. Riley Keough, Presley’s granddaughter and owner of Graceland, sued the company earlier this month to stop a foreclosure sale of the Memphis property.
“We figure out how to steal,” the thief wrote to the New York Times on Friday. “That’s what we do.”
Naussany Investments presented a deed of trust to the estate in September via the Los Angeles County Superior Court, claiming that the late Lisa Marie Presley, Keough’s mother, borrowed $3.8 million from the company and offered Graceland as collateral. Keough fiercely disputed the claims, calling the documents “fraudulent” and “forgeries” in her lawsuit.
The alleged thief accepted defeat.
“I had fun figuring this one out and it didn’t succeed very well,” the statement continued.
Referencing Keough’s legal victories in the case, the message, as reportedly written, continued: “Yo client dont have nothing to worries, win fir her. She beat me at my own game.”
The New York Times reported that the thief wrote their message in Luganda, a Bantu language of Uganda. The email, the outlet said, was faxed from a North American toll-free number that also appeared in court documents.
A Tennessee judge issued a temporary injunction blocking the sale at a hearing last Wednesday, in which no representatives from Naussany Investments appeared. Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins said he would proceed with Keough’s fraud lawsuit, which asked the court to declare the deed of trust illegitimate.
Tennessee’s Shelby County Register of Deeds said last Tuesday that it did not have any filings relating to a Graceland deed, according to broadcast outlet WREG Memphis. The deed also included the signature of Florida notary Kimberly L. Philbrick, who submitted an affidavit stating she had never met Lisa Marie Presley or notarized a document signed by the singer.
Hours after the Wednesday ruling, a person purporting to be a Naussany Investments representative submitted a statement that said the company intended to drop its claims on Graceland, according to the Associated Press. However, the legal filings have yet to appear.
Elvis Presley Enterprises, which manages the Presley estate, told The Times in a statement at the time that it agreed with the court’s ruling to block the sale.
“As the court has now made clear, there was no validity to the claims,” the statement read. “There will be no foreclosure. Graceland will continue to operate as it has for the past 42 years, ensuring that Elvis fans from around the world can continue to have a best in class experience when visiting his iconic home.”
Environmental activists have opened a new front in their long-running fight against a company that pipes water from the San Bernardino Mountains and bottles it for sale as Arrowhead brand bottled water.
In a petition to the state, several environmental groups and local activists called for an investigation by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, arguing that the company BlueTriton Brands is harming wildlife habitat and species by extracting water that would otherwise flow in Strawberry Creek.
Those who oppose the taking of water from San Bernardino National Forest want the state agency to assess the environmental effects and uphold protections under state law, said Rachel Doughty, a lawyer for the environmental nonprofit Story of Stuff Project.
“They’ve dewatered the creek,” Doughty said.
If the company weren’t siphoning water in its network of pipes, she said, Strawberry Creek “would be habitat for endangered species, it would be providing a downstream water supply, it would support fish, and it can’t do any of those things without water.”
The coalition of environmental groups and activists said in their May 13 petition that the state agency should demand the company apply for an authorization — called a streambed alteration agreement — for its pipes and other infrastructure, and should examine whether the ongoing diversion of water violates state environmental laws.
The groups said the company’s taking of water has “caused the extirpation of native species and the destruction of riparian habitat — clearcut harm to the public trust.” They urged the state to “take all appropriate enforcement action.”
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Activists who have been trying to shut down the company’s bottled water pipeline made their appeal to the wildlife agency eight months after the State Water Resources Control Board voted to order the company to halt its “unauthorized diversions” of water from springs in the San Bernardino Mountains.
State officials determined the company has been unlawfully diverting water without valid water rights. But BlueTriton Brands sued to challenge that decision in Fresno County Superior Court, arguing the process was rife with problems and that the company is entitled to the water.
A spokesperson for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said the agency has received the petition and is evaluating it.
BlueTriton Brands responded to the petition in an email.
“Responsible and proactive water stewardship is central to everything we do. We’re proud of the work we’ve done and continue to do in Strawberry Canyon, studying, reporting, and managing our operations to help protect the land and natural resources,” the company said. “We will continue to operate in compliance with all state and federal laws.”
The company also said it will “partner with people in our communities, governments, policy makers, businesses, and consumers to sustainably protect and shape our shared future.”
But Steve Loe, a retired biologist who previously worked for the San Bernardino National Forest, said the state should require the company to stop taking water from the creek and the ecosystem.
“The stream has been completely dried up by BlueTriton, and BlueTriton needs to put some water back in the stream to meet state and federal requirements,” Loe said. “Restoring water back to Strawberry Creek will make a huge difference in the watershed for all of the plant and animal species.”
Restoring water to the habitat would help endangered bird species such as the southwestern willow flycatcher and least Bell’s vireo, he said, as well as other species including the mountain yellow-legged frog and southern rubber boa.
He said a flowing creek could also support the return of native fish species, such as Santa Ana speckled dace.
In the petition, Loe and others cited historical records describing the springs and the creek nearly a century ago, including field notes and reports from W.P. Rowe, an engineer who surveyed the watershed starting in 1929.
Rowe wrote that Strawberry Creek flowed on the south slope of the San Bernardino Mountains from a “source at a group of springs” and flowed in a canyon filled with “alder, sycamore, dogwood and cedar trees together with ferns and thimble berry bushes.”
Loe said the records show that before the water was tapped for bottling, the stream was flowing and supported a thriving riparian habitat, which is now largely dry.
“It’s public water,” Loe said. “And the public has a right to push for its protection.”
“I want water back in the creek this summer,” he said.
In the decision that is being argued in court, the state water board ordered the company to stop taking water for bottling from most of its water-collection tunnels and boreholes in the mountains north of San Bernardino.
Records show about 158 acre-feet, or 51 million gallons, flowed through the company’s network of pipes in 2022.
The system of 4-inch steel pipes collects water that flows from various sites on the steep mountainside above the creek.
The pipeline runs to a roadside tank, and some of the water is hauled away on trucks to be bottled and sold as Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water.
Local activists have campaigned for years calling for state and federal authorities to shut down the bottled water pipeline. Controversy over the use of water from the national forest erupted after a 2015 investigation by the Desert Sun revealed that the U.S. Forest Service was allowing Nestlé to continue siphoning water using a permit that listed 1988 as the expiration date.
The Forest Service subsequently began a review of Nestlé’s permit, and in 2018 granted a new permit for up to five years. The revelations about Nestlé piping water out of the national forest sparked an outpouring of opposition and prompted several complaints to California regulators questioning the company’s water rights claims, which led to the state’s investigation.
BlueTriton Brands took over the bottled water business in 2021 when Nestlé’s North American bottled water division was purchased by private-equity firm One Rock Capital Partners and investment firm Metropoulos & Co.
BlueTriton and prior owners of the business have for years had a federal “special-use” permit allowing them to use the pipeline and other water infrastructure in the San Bernardino National Forest.
The Forest Service has been charging an annual permit fee, currently $2,500 per year. There has been no fee for using the water.
BlueTriton’s 2018 permit expired in August, and the company has submitted an application to renew the permit, which Forest Service officials are reviewing, said Gustavo Bahena, a spokesperson for the San Bernardino National Forest.
“Because Blue Triton had a timely request for renewal of the permit, the current permit remains in effect… until the Forest renders a decision on their new request,” Bahena said in an email.
Other groups that are petitioning the state include Save Our Forest Assn., Center for Biological Diversity, the local chapter of the Sierra Club, Southern California Native Freshwater Fauna Working Group and the Tri-County Conservation League.
Amanda Frye, an activist who has taken a leading role in the campaign, said she thinks the Forest Service is failing to uphold its responsibility to manage public land and resources.
“We still have a dry creek,” Frye said.
“Something’s got to change,” she said. “We have the right to have these resources protected.”
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation may launch a criminal probe into possible fraud allegedly surrounding a now-blocked foreclosure sale of Elvis Presley’s famed Graceland mansion, according to TMZ and Radar.
The outlets reported Wednesday that the FBI had contacted actor Riley Keough‘s team and Graceland officials on Tuesday, allegedly expressing interest in Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC, the company seeking to auction off the building.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation told The Times via email that it had not received a request to “investigate from the district attorney general in Shelby County, which would be the mechanism for our potential involvement.”
Representatives for Keough did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for confirmation and comment.
Keough filed a lawsuit against Naussany Investments last week, alleging that the company had presented fraudulent documents stating that her late mother, Lisa Marie Presley, had borrowed $3.8 million from the company and “gave a deed of trust encumbering Graceland as security.”
The “Daisy Jones & the Six” star stated in her lawsuit — which asked a judge to block the auction of Graceland and to declare that the documents were fraudulent — that “Lisa Marie Presley never borrowed money from Naussany Investments and never gave a deed of trust to Naussany Investments.”
A Tennessee judge awarded Keough a temporary injunction against the sale on Wednesday. The court also said it would move forward with the fraud case, citing a lack of appearance by Naussany Investments representatives at Wednesday’s hearing and the need for additional evidence from Keough’s lawyers.
After the ruling, a person purporting to be a Naussany Investments representative submitted a statement that said the company would drop its claims on Graceland, the Associated Press reported.
Elvis Presley Enterprises, which manages the Presley estate, told The Times in a statement Wednesday that business would continue as usual.
“As the court has now made clear, there was no validity to the claims,” the statement read. “There will be no foreclosure. Graceland will continue to operate as it has for the past 42 years, ensuring that Elvis fans from around the world can continue to have a best in class experience when visiting his iconic home.”
Keough’s lawsuit, which was reviewed by The Times, said Naussany Investments presented a deed of trust for Graceland and a standard promissory note to the estate via the Los Angeles County Superior Court in September.
The deed of trust contained the signature of Florida notary Kimberly Philbrick, who submitted an affidavit May 8 saying she had no involvement with the documents.
“I have never met Lisa Marie Presley, nor have I ever notarized a document signed by Lisa Marie Presley,” Philbrick’s affidavit read. “I do not know why my signature appears on this document.”
Keough was formally named the sole trustee of her mother’s estate — and, by extension, of Elvis’ estate — in November after settling a legal dispute with grandmother Priscilla Presley, Elvis’ widow.
Britney Coleman as Bobbie and Jacob Dickey as Andy in the North American Tour of COMPANY.
These days, there are a number of plays, shown in this area and elsewhere, in which the lead male role is gender-switched leading to insightful and successful productions. And until that casting practice is banned by the Ohio legislature (after they have made sure gender guards are posted at all the public restrooms) we can enjoy the richness produced by female performers in male Shakespearean roles and perhaps many others.
In Stephen Sondheim’s iconic Company, now at the Connor Palace Theatre in Playhouse Square, the main role of the man Bobby has been switched to a female named, conveniently, Bobbie. While the show is an absolute treat, that casting flip turns in some mixed results.
This tale about a person resisting the temptations of marriage (the book is by George Furth, based on a series of his one-act plays) is a bit off-center with a woman in the central, marriage-averse role of Bobbie. It’s not that someone couldn’t compose a musical about such a woman, it’s just that Company isn’t that show and was never intended to be.
In the role of Bobbie, a game and bubbly Britney Coleman sings the songs well. But the lyrics are often a near miss, as if she were wearing a suit tailored at the Men’s Wearhouse—fine from a distance but not perfect when you look closely. This mismatch is inevitable since the play is essentially about relationships, and relationships are gender-driven no matter where the participants are on the gender spectrum.
As written back in 1970, Bobby was a passive guy, almost a cipher, who was responding to his friendly but intrusive gaggle of couples who want him to get married, now that he’s turned 35.
But age 35 is different for men and women in our culture, a basic truth we don’t need to explicate here. And unless we learn more about Bobbie’s character, it’s hard for the audience to sort out her motivations.
Setting that issue aside, Company was innovative when it opened as a “concept” musical with no traditional storyline. Comprised of short vignettes, the script maneuvers Bobbie through various situations where she interacts with her different married pals.
The touring company directed by Marianne Elliott soars in almost all scenes, but sags in a couple others. As mentioned above, the showstopper is “Getting Married Today” in which the gay men Jamie (Matt Rodin) and Paul (Jhardon DiShon Milton) have a wedding scheduled. But Jamie is nervous and shares his panic with Bobbie, setting the stage for a hilarious production number featuring a singing love priestess (Marina Kondo) and others urging him on as they appear from unexpected places, including the kitchen refrigerator.
Also excellent is “Sorry-Grateful,” a song by three dudes, Harry (James Earl Jones II), David (Matt Bittner) and Larry (Derrick Davis), who mull over the bipolar nature of a committed relationship: “You’re sorry-grateful/Regretful-happy/Why look for answers/Where none occur?”
Bobbie has an overnight hook-up with airline steward Andy (a delightfully dense Jacob Dickey) that culminates in one of Sondheim’s best songs, “Barcelona.” But the downbeat stinger at the end of the song falls flat here since the relationship dynamics are muddled by the gender switch.
A couple vignettes that also don’t work as well include an early visit to a couple that is having marital difficulties due to Harry (Jones II doubling) being on the wagon and Sarah (Kathryn Allison) being empowered by her jujitsu exercises. Their over-the-top acting choices feel out of tune with the rest of the show, more appropriate for a skit on Hee-Haw rather than this sophisticated urban yarn.
And while Judy McLane as Joanne (in the Elaine Stritch role) provides a dry dose of cynicism throughout the proceedings, she suddenly goes mellow during the acid drenched “The Ladies Who Lunch.” Anchored on her barstool and more drunk than dyspeptic, McLane concedes total ownership of the song to Stritch.
To her credit, Coleman spreads her vocal wings in the final song, “Being Alive,” giving it a warm and personal turn, even if her voice in the higher registers has a tendency to squee when it should soar.
The scenic design by Bunny Christie features square and oblong boxes, at times confining Bobbie by herself and the couples at other times, with the interiors of those boxes all painted in prison-issue monochromatic gray. Deal with that color scheme symbolism as you wish.
If Stephen Sondheim had written a musical about a woman who is hesitant about marriage, he would most certainly have written different songs. Since we can’t have that show, we should happily make do with the Bobbie version of the original—if for no other reason than Sondheim’s glorious songs await, as always, to delight us.
Company Through May 19 at Playhouse Square, Connor Palace Theater, 1615 Euclid Ave., clevelandplayhouse.com, 216-241-6000.
Would the new ride vehicles be purely electric? Or would they be hybrids that still burned some climate-wrecking, oil-based fuel? And how long would it take for Walt Disney’s creative and engineering heirs to make the long-overdue switch?
After I wrote a story breaking the news about the company’s plans, a coalition of electric vehicle activists launched a campaign to pressure Disney to commit to electric vehicles — not hybrids — and to phase out gasoline within two years.
On Thursday, those activists won.
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In a written statement, Disneyland spokesperson Jessica Good confirmed to The Times that electrification “means fully electric — it does not mean hybrid or any other version of a gasoline combustion engine.” She added that the theme park “will no longer be using the current engines within the next 30 months.”
That means by fall 2026, Disneyland guests will no longer have to worry about breathing lung-damaging exhaust as they wait in line for Autopia — and park employees won’t have spend hours-long shifts inhaling those fumes as they work the ride.
It’s not yet clear when the newly electrified Autopia will reopen.
“Reimagining an attraction does take time, so we don’t have a reopening date at this time,” Good said.
Zan Dubin, the electric vehicle advocate leading the pressure campaign, was thrilled when she heard Thursday’s news. She called it a “huge victory” and a powerful reminder that climate activism works.
“All it takes for bad stuff to keep happening is for good people to do nothing,” she said, paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln. “And we refuse to stand by and do nothing.”
Dubin had been planning to lead a rally outside Walt Disney Studios in Burbank on Sunday, to urge the company to do better on Autopia. She’s told me she’s moving forward with the event, although she said it will now be more of a celebration.
“We are thrilled,” she said.
The stories that Disney tells at its theme parks — and on its streaming services, cruise ships and other platforms — are far more than entertainment. They play a powerful role in shaping how we understand our world and ourselves. That’s why the company’s decision to close Disneyland’s Splash Mountain ride — which was based on a racist film — and its increasing embrace of LGBTQ+ characters in its films have become such political flash points. The opponents of progress know that these choices matter.
If you care about climate progress, you should care about Autopia.
Disneyland visitors wait to exit the Autopia attraction in March.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
When the attraction opened in 1955 as a centerpiece of Walt Disney’s Tomorrowland, it helped cement the idea in the American consciousness that gas-guzzling cars — and endless freeways — were the way of the future. Within a year, President Eisenhower had signed the bill that would create the Interstate Highway System as we know it today.
Nearly 70 years later, cars, trucks and other modes of transportation are the nation’s largest source of heat-trapping emissions — emissions that have fueled record global temperatures for 10 straight months, resulting in deadlier heat waves, fires and storms. Fossil fuel combustion also produces regular old air pollution that researchers say kills millions of people each year.
Mining to supply lithium for lithium-ion electric car batteries can be environmentally destructive in some places. Freeways have historically been built through low-income communities of color, tearing apart vibrant neighborhoods. The more we can rebuild our cities around public transit, electric bikes and green space — and less around cars — the happier and healthier we’ll be.
Beyond Autopia, Walt Disney Co. has an opportunity to promote that kind of future in Tomorrowland.
As I wrote earlier this month, Disneyland fans agree that the once-futuristic land hasn’t been especially forward-thinking for a long time. To my mind, clean energy and sustainability would make the perfect theme for a new and improved Tomorrowland. There’s already a major public transit element in the Monorail. Throw in some gas-free induction stoves at the main restaurant, some solar panels, some environmental films at the currently empty movie theater — it could be pretty awesome.
But even short of all that, we’re going to need a lot of electric vehicles, fast, to get the climate crisis under control. And for Disney to start telling the story of those EVs at Autopia is a big deal. The company deserves credit for getting it right.
“I’m glad they’re stepping up and doing the right hitting,” said Joel Levin, executive director of Plug In America, a national electric vehicle advocacy group that’s sponsoring this Sunday’s rally. “It’s a great way for the public to experience electrification, to turn it into a teachable moment, rather than the experience of standing next to a gas lawnmower, which is what it feels like now.”
Nearly a year ago, every tenant at the massive Westside apartment complex Barrington Plaza was served with an eviction notice by their landlord, who said the residents of nearly 600 units needed to move out so the company could install fire sprinklers following two major blazes.
In the months since, most of the tenants have left. But more than 100 stayed behind, vowing to fight in court for the right to stay in their rent-controlled units, suspecting that the owner’s real intent was to upgrade the complex and re-rent the units at market rate.
On Wednesday, their day in court finally came as lawyers for the tenants and the owner, Douglas Emmett Inc., presented opening arguments in a civil case that will decide whether the evictions are legal. The tenants and their advocates see the case as an important test of renter protections in a city faced with an affordable housing crisis.
“I wanted to make sure I’m represented in this fight for tenants in Los Angeles,” said Barrington tenant Chuck Martinez, who has lived in the building since 2021. “To lose this affordable housing is a step backward for L.A.”
For the owner, the case at the Santa Monica Courthouse is about landlords having the legal right to choose not to continue renting their units. “Inside the courtroom, this is a case about upholding the law,” said John Samuel Gibson, attorney for Douglas Emmett.
The company wants to evict the residents under the Ellis Act, which allows landlords to evict rent-stabilized tenants to remove units from the rental market — for instance, to build condos.
The heart of the case revolves around whether the company truly intended to take the units off the rental market and whether the law requires them to do so permanently.
Frances M. Campbell, the tenant’s attorney, said evidence presented during the trial would show that the company for years had plans to “transform and upgrade” the complex and to re-rent the apartments “at a new market rate.”
Campbell said the law requires owners who invoke the Ellis Act to remove the units permanently from the rental market.
“Defendants can point to no case that allows a landlord to invoke the Ellis Act to temporarily go out of the rental business while it remodels or makes repairs to its buildings. And that makes sense, because that is not the purpose of the Ellis Act,” the tenants’ lawyers wrote in a trial brief.
The lawyer pointed to an email sent by Douglas Emmett CEO Jordan Kaplan to city housing official Mercedes Márquez in May 2023, just days before the eviction notices were filed, as evidence that the company intended to re-rent the units.
“This project is likely to take many years and assuming we bring the rental units back online within 10 years (which is a very good assumption) they will still be subject to the RSO,” Kaplan wrote, referring to the city’s rent stabilization ordinance.
In his arguments on behalf of Douglas Emmett, Gibson pointed to that same email as evidence that the company wasn’t trying to evade rent control.
“I personally assure you we are not doing this to remove Barrington Plaza from the RSO,” the email said.
Installing fire sprinklers and making other safety upgrades is a multiyear project, and the apartments will be removed from the market during that time, he said.
The law allows owners to use the Ellis Act to “take the property off the rental market for a longterm period,” the company’s lawyers argued in a trial brief.
The Ellis Act does not require owners to remove the properties from the rental market forever, he said. Only that they do not “conduct a sham removal” in order to evade rent control.
“This is not one of those sham situations,” Gibson said.
Thousands of Californians who won’t see their home insurance renewed by State Farm this summer are homeowners in Los Angeles County, with some upscale Westside neighborhoods hit hard, according to the insurer’s recent filings with the Department of Insurance.
A majority of the insurer’s customers in neighborhoods in West Los Angeles as well as in or near the Santa Monica Mountains including Bel-Air, Pacific Palisades and Woodland Hills are going to lose their coverage.
The State Farm move affects some of the county’s toniest neighborhoods — adding another layer of expense and financial risk for homeowners in areas that were already costly and imperiled by wildfires. Older homeowners and those with comparatively lower incomes who bought when housing was much cheaper could be hard hit.
Denise Hardin, president of State Farm, explained the company’s decision in a March 20 letter to Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, stating that rate hikes that were recently approved by the Department of Insurance amid high inflation would be insufficient to restore the company’s financial strength.
“We must now take action to reduce our overall exposure to be more commensurate with the capital on hand to cover such exposure, as most insurers in California have already done,” she wrote. “We have been reluctant to take this step, recognizing how difficult it will be for impacted policyholders, in addition to our independent contractor agents who are small business owners and employers in their local California communities.
“A financial failure of [State Farm] will detrimentally impact the entire market,” Hardin added, “an outcome we are all trying to avoid.”
The letter also included several pages of ZIP Codes and the number of homeowners who would lose their coverage this summer.
In Pacific Palisades, according to the letter, 69.4% of the 2,342 policyholders — or about 1,600 — will lose coverage. In Brentwood, 61.5% of State Farm’s 2,114 customers there will lose their policies, or about 1,300 non-renewals.
Of the 1,805 policyholders in Woodland Hills, 60% — or about 1,090 — won’t be renewed, while in Bel-Air, 67% of 987 customers, about 660 customers, will be affected,
Orinda in Contra Costa County and Los Gatos in Santa Clara County also will see a high number of policyholders lose coverage.
As part of its assessment, the insurer looked at communities in areas prone to wildfires as well as those at risk of fires following an earthquake, which included communities such as Beverly Hills and Westwood.
Thelma Waxman, president of the Brentwood Homeowners Assn., whose 1,200 members own about 4,000 properties, said it had been a stressful time for members, and for residents living near high-risk fire zones.
Losing State Farm coverage “is the No. 1 topic of discussion” among association members, she said. “Everybody is nervous.”
Last year, the association created its first California Fire Safety Council and worked closely with My Safe L.A., a nonprofit providing fire and safety education, as well as the Los Angeles Fire Department in an attempt to reduce fire risks in the area.
Waxman said the formation of the safety council was partly in response to insurance companies dropping policyholders in the state.
“At first we thought we could get a discount,” she said, “but then it became about trying to keep our policies.”
Waxman said she’d been urging residents who will lose their home insurance with State Farm to start shopping now for a new home insurance policy as it’s difficult to find insurers writing policies in the state.
State Farm said those losing their policies would be notified between July 3 and Aug. 20.
State Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin (D-Thousand Oaks), whose district includes many of the affected neighborhoods, expressed concern but hoped that the state could end the crisis by altering regulations to encourage insurers to “return to the business of writing policies for Californians and their properties.”
Insurance companies have cited high inflation, catastrophe exposure, the cost of reinsurance (a type of insurance for insurance companies) and the limitations posed by decades-old insurance regulations as reasons for scaling back policies in the state.
Left with no other choice, a number of Californians have turned to the FAIR Plan as a last resort. Funded by the insurers doing business in California, the Fair Access to Insurance Requirement plan provides more limited coverage as a fallback for property owners unable to find conventional policies they can afford.
But the enrollment surge is putting a financial strain on the state insurer as it faces a potential loss of $311 billion, up from $50 billion in 2018.
State officials said the FAIR Plan had a surplus of $200 million and was at risk of insolvency should a catastrophic event occur.
Lara has proposed a set of new rules that would allow insurers to raise rates to cover reinsurance costs and projected losses from catastrophic fires, but also require that they provide coverage for more homes in California’s canyons and hills.
The proposals, which aim to move people off the FAIR Plan and slow the increase in premiums, have won support from insurance industry trade groups and some consumer groups, although some consumer advocates, such as Consumer Watchdog, have criticized the proposed rules.
In the letter to Lara, Hardin said State Farm would continue to cooperate with the state in finding a resolution to the home insurance crisis.
“We are acutely aware of the political challenges that the actions needed to improve [State Farm’s] financial position pose to broader reform efforts,” she wrote. “Please know that we have an ongoing desire and commitment to collaborate with you and your staff, as well as the Governor’s office, to achieve these reforms as quickly as possible.”
A convicted Beverly Hills con artist with a long history of swindles pleaded guilty to another one Friday, admitting that he duped investors out of more than $18 million by concocting a sham cannabis empire while completing a sentence in a prior criminal case.
Mark Roy Anderson, 69, pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. He duped his victims with false claims that he ran companies invested in hemp farms and cannabis-infused retail products, as well as a sham bottling business.
Anderson, his investors discovered, is a convicted con artist who started swindling people at least three decades ago. He launched his purported hemp business immediately after his May 2019 release from the federal prison in Texas where he had served more than 11 years for an oil investment scam, federal authorities said.
In the first scheme he pleaded guilty to Friday, Anderson tricked investors in 2020 and 2021 into providing funding for his company, called Harvest Farm Group, to harvest and process hemp grown on his farm into medical-grade cannabidiol (CBD) isolate — a chemical found in marijuana — to be sold for a substantial profit.
Anderson persuaded investors to invest in Harvest Farm Group by falsely representing that, through the company, he owned and operated a hemp farm in Kern County. He also lied that he had already completed successful and profitable harvests of hemp from the farm, which the FBI said did not exist.
He also falsely said he was using his own machinery and equipment to convert the hemp into CBD isolate and Delta 8, a psychoactive substance that, like CBD isolate, could be used in consumer products ranging from olive oil to body cream, federal officials said.
In the second scheme, Anderson deceived investors from April 2021 to May 2023 by soliciting money for sham companies Bio Pharma and Verta Bottling companies, by claiming that these businesses successfully manufactured, bottled, and packaged commercial products.
Anderson falsely stated that his bottling companies owned and possessed millions of dollars’ worth of assets, including hemp biomass, CBD isolate, CBD oil, manufacturing equipment and a lease for a warehouse to manufacture and sell its products.
Anderson used some of the money to buy a $1.3-million gated residence surrounded by citrus groves in Ojai, according to the FBI. He diverted another $2.3 million to personal expenses, including more than $650,000 for vintage and luxury automobiles, $13,000 for chartered private jet flights and $142,000 for merchandise from Williams-Sonoma, Ferragamo, Crate & Barrel and other retailers, the FBI alleged in a criminal complaint.
He has agreed to forfeit his ill-gotten gains from these schemes, including 15 cars — one of them a Ferrari — and his Ojai real estate.
Anderson, a disbarred lawyer, has a federal court hearing set for Aug. 23. He faces a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison for each count.
Former Times staff writer Michael Finnegan contributed to this report.
“Music is a gift, and has a power to crystallize a moment,” said a breathless Patti LuPone on Saturday night, moments after sweeping onto the Eisemann Center’s Hill Performance Hall stage, on the receiving end of the first of many standing ovations. “This is my life in music — so far.”…
With home insurers scaling back coverage in the state, enrollment is surging in California’s backstop insurance plan — as is the plan’s risk of sustaining losses that it can’t cover.
Victoria Roach, president of the FAIR Plan Assn., told lawmakers this week that property owners even in areas with low wildfire risk were finding it difficult to keep their homes insured as companies increased rates, limit coverage or left areas susceptible to natural disasters amid climate change.
That has prompted thousands of Californians to purchase coverage through the state insurer as a last resort. Funded by the insurers doing business in California, the Fair Access to Insurance Requirement plan provides a limited policy as a fallback for property owners unable to find conventional coverage they can afford.
Roach said the Fair Plan set a new record last month when it added 15,000 new policyholders.
The FAIR plan has about 375,000 policyholders, and the insurer’s total risk exposure was $311 billion as of December 2023; it was $50 billion in 2018.
“We’re one of the largest writers in the state right now in terms of new business coming in,” Roach said. “As those numbers climb, our financial stability comes more into question.”
Roach said homeowners and businesses are typically insured by any of the state’s 118 standard insurers or 132 surplus line insurers, which specialize in high-risk insurance.
“Unfortunately, as you know with the current state of the market, I think this is often reversed because there’s not a lot of options out there for people,” Roach told lawmakers during Wednesday’s Assembly Insurance Committee. “Instead, the FAIR plan is quickly moving to be the first resort for a lot of people.”
She said consumers who would never have sought insurance through the FAIR plan in years past were now among the new policyholders, many of whom were not living in wildfire areas.
The insurer’s expansion is the latest wrinkle in California’s ongoing insurance crisis, and it mirrors a similar trend across the country of major companies dropping customers in areas prone to wildfires, flooding and hurricanes.
Florida’s state insurance of last resort, known as the Citizens Property Insurance Corp., has become the largest property insurer there, adding about 11,000 new policies in the last two weeks, according to local reports.
In Louisiana, state officials have been trying to address an insurance crisis following a series of hurricanes in 2020 and 2021 that caused insurance companies to stop renewing policies or leave the state.
Since 2022, at least eight insurers, led by State Farm and Allstate, have announced plans to stop offering home insurance to new customers or withdraw from the state entirely. Some blamed a spike in the cost of reinsurance — insurance policies that insurance companies buy to cover their big losses — and financial strains caused by inflation that have made materials and labor for home repair and rebuilding costly.
The potential loss of insurers prompted Gov. Gavin Newsom to issue an executive order commanding the insurance commissioner to take action to address issues with the insurance market and expand coverage options for consumers.
Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara’s response to the crisis is a set of new rules still being implemented that would allow insurers to raise rates to cover reinsurance costs and projected losses from catastrophic fires, but also require them to provide coverage for more homes in the canyons and hills. The proposals, which aim to move people off the FAIR plan and slow the increase in premiums, have won support from insurance industry trade groups and some consumer groups, but criticism from other consumer advocates.
Under the existing system, insurers need to apply to the Department of Insurance to raise their average rates across the state and prove that the price hike is justified. The process allows consumer advocates to intervene to contest the insurer’s claims.
This system was created when California voters approved Proposition 103 in 1988, but the insurance department went a couple of steps further than the ballot measure. Its rules barred insurance companies from including the cost of reinsurance in their rates and allowed the use only of historical loss data, rather than forward-looking simulations, to support a hike in premiums.
Insurance industry representatives have been trying to lift both of those restrictions for years, but their calls have intensified as insurers have pulled back coverage in California.
On Thursday, Lara proposed a regulation that would allow insurers to use catastrophe modeling that takes into account the projected impacts of climate change and other shifting factors when asking to raise rates.
“We can no longer look solely to the past as a guide to the future,” Lara said in a statement. “My strategy will help modernize our marketplace, restoring options for consumers while safeguarding the independent, transparent review of rate filings by Department of Insurance experts, which is a bedrock principle of California law.”
The proposed regulation comes a week after the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a motion demanding that Lara investigate the compliance measures that insurance companies require from homeowners to keep their coverage.
“It’s no secret that insurance providers have become more conservative due to increased wildfire threats statewide,” said Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who introduced the motion, in a statement. “As a result, homeowners are increasingly being put in a very tough position: pay higher premiums and comply with varied, costly, and inconsistent mitigation requirements or lose your insurance.”
She added: “I’ve heard from many of my constituents district wide who are facing steep cost increases or being dropped altogether by their insurance carriers and left to fend for themselves. That’s simply unacceptable.”
In response to proposed expansion of catastrophe models,Consumer Watchdog, a consumer advocacy group that often intervenes in proposed rate hikes, said Lara’s proposed regulation limits transparency.
“Black box catastrophe models are notoriously contradictory and unreliable, which is why public review and transparency are key before insurance companies are allowed to use them to raise rates,” the group wrote in a statement. “Commissioner Lara’s proposed rule appears drafted to limit the information available to the public about the impact of models on rates in violation of Proposition 103.”
The group contends that the rule fails to spell out how the Department of Insurance would assess a model’s bias or accuracy and instead creates “a pre-review process that appears primarily focused on determining what information companies must disclose and what they may conceal from public view.”
“California needs a public catastrophe model to ensure climate data is transparent and to prevent insurance price-gouging and bias.”
Lupe Breard remembers coming to live in the Queen Anne Victorian house in Echo Park with her mother and siblings when she was a child. The memory is still vivid decades later, she says, because she didn’t want to move there — until she saw the chimney and told herself Santa Claus could bring presents down it at Christmas. She’d never had a fireplace before.
She has stayed ever since, raising her three children in the historic home and watching as the neighborhood changed from a quiet, under-the-radar community to one where homes routinely sell for well over $1 million.
Breard stayed even after her mother died in 2018, leaving the house in her will to three of Breard’s older siblings. She stayed after the family estate tried, unsuccessfully, to evict her. And she has continued fighting to stay after the house was sold in 2022 to an investor who wants her and her sister, Sarah Padilla, 73, out.
Inside Lupe Breard’s Echo Park home, various rooms are filled with decades of belongings that she sought to sell in case she had to leave.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Over the years, Breard, 64, has come to see herself as the guardian of a historic house with an important history. “The Queen of Elysian Heights,” as it is now known, is one of the earliest homes built in Echo Park. In the 1960s it was owned by members of the Arechiga family, who moved there after they drew national attention as the final holdouts resisting eviction from their home in Chavez Ravine to make way for Dodger Stadium.
“I know that once I’m gone it’ll be impossible to defend it,” Breard says. “I love that house. I love the walls. I love the staircase. I love walking out on the balcony at night when you can see the stars. I love the brick underneath the house where I used to hide when I was little.”
The history of the Queen of Elysian Heights is not entirely clear, but it is believed to have been built in 1895, around the time when the community was first subdivided.
Many locals see the triplex as the cornerstone of a historic neighborhood whose connection to the Arechiga family serves as an important reminder of a dark moment in the city’s past. Though it was once stadiums, freeways and city redevelopment that regularly displaced people in Black and Latino neighborhoods, today it is more likely to be gentrification and residential real estate investors.
“The house is very special,” said Paul Bowers, a resident of the neighborhood who helped petition the city for historic status. “It’s the first house in this entire area. And there’s something magical about it.”
A sign hangs in support of Lupe Breard, 64, who faced eviction in Echo Park.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Breard’s mother was a waitress at a restaurant near Placita Olvera who stretched her tips to make ends meet. She rented the house for a few years, then bought it in 1975 for $18,500, according to public records. The neighborhood was quiet.
“You really had to tell people where Echo Park was,” Breard says.
Breard continued living in the home as an adult and raised her children there alongside her mother. Breard and her older sister, Sarah Padilla, lived in separate units in the triplex at the time of their mother’s death in 2018.
Soon after, Breard says, she learned that she and another sister had been excluded from their mother’s will. The home had been left to Padilla and two other siblings. Their older brother was named executor of the estate. Family representatives of the estate did not respond to phone calls and emails requesting comment.
Soon, plans were in motion to sell the house, which over the years had grown to be valued at more than $1 million.
Breard says she feared that she would be evicted and the house would be torn down to make room for apartments or condos. She saw it as history repeating itself. She, like the Arechigas, would soon be ripped from her home.
“It’s not just an apartment you rent. I grew up there. It took part in raising me,” she said.
Members of the LA Tenants Union were on hand during a recent yard sale to support Lupe Breard, who was facing eviction.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
She began organizing with the LA Tenants Union and along with other supporters worked to file an application to have the property designated a historic-cultural monument with the city planning department, hoping that it would deter a developer from buying the property and tearing it down.
The estate framed the moves as stalling tactics meant to keep the house from being sold, according to court records.
Breard’s supporters circulated a petition calling for a show of community support so that the sisters could remain in the house and for “the rejection of tearing it down for future development projects.”
When the home went up for auction in the spring of 2022 there were multiple bidders. It sold for a little more than $1.2 million to NELA Development. Padilla, who according to court records refused to cooperate with the sale, received about $290,000 when the estate was settled.
“Buyer to be aware that the property will be delivered with its current occupants who are not paying rent,” read a notification issued with the sale.
Padilla did not respond to requests for an interview. Representatives for NELA also did not return emails and phone calls requesting comment. The company bills itself on its website as a “family-run real estate and investment company dedicated to preserving and enhancing the many precious neighborhoods that make Los Angeles a special place to live, work and play.”
Charles Fisher, a historian who prepared the application for the home’s historic designation, said the company has been a good caretaker for historic homes in the past.
It “has got a fairly good track record in dealing with historic properties,” he said. “They’ve bought houses and fixed them up properly.”
He noted that the company had received an award from the Highland Park Heritage Trust for its work fixing and preserving two local homes.
In June 2022, shortly after the company purchased the home, Breard was given a three-day notice to “perform or quit.” It said that she had “failed and refused to permit an appraiser or other workmen to enter the property” and gave her three days to do so or face eviction.
One month later, the property management company filed an eviction case against her in court, saying she had not complied with the notice.
Breard says she was never given the opportunity to comply. In November 2022, with the eviction pending, the home won the historic designation from the city over the new owner’s objection.
In January, a jury ruled against Breard in the eviction case, setting the stage for sheriff’s deputies to soon arrive and lock her out of the house.
Not long after, Breard saw a video posted to Facebook by the new owners, with the hashtag #realestateinvesting.
“Super excited to announce our first project for 2024,” a man says, standing in front of the house, its pastel facade looking worn but stately.
“This house here in Echo Park is absolutely amazing. It’s a Queen Anne Victorian … Let us know if you have any questions or if you’d like the private viewing of this property.”
Breard began preparing for the possibility that she would have to leave the home, though she wasn’t sure where she would go. She is disabled and cannot work, she said.
This month, Breard hosted a yard sale to get rid of many of the possessions that filled the house over the decades.
A couple of days later, she got some good news. A new attorney representing her had asked the judge to set aside the jury’s decision, arguing, among other issues, that the notice to quit had been defective as it never gave Breard specific instructions on how to fix the alleged lease violation.
The judge ruled in her favor, putting an end to the eviction proceeding.
After the ruling, Breard said, she went to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels and gave thanks at the tomb of St. Vibiana, the city’s patron saint. From her perspective, the win was a victory for a city where people without money are constantly being pushed out.
“I love Los Angeles, it’s my home,” she said. But “this is happening to so many people. You see people on the street and nobody even looks at them.”
Despite the win, the home’s future is still unclear. Breard’s sister still has a pending eviction case.
“The Queen of Elysian Heights” is one of the oldest homes in Echo Park.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Lupita Limón Corrales, an organizer with the LA Tenants Union, said a lawyer for the owner reached out to them and raised the possibility of selling the property to a community land trust, which would create a nonprofit that would be responsible for the home. The lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
Corrales said the group is working with the sisters to come up with a proposal that it will present to the company.
If it were to happen, it could take a long time, she said. For now, their main focus is helping Padilla win her pending eviction case.
