Court Opinion

ID: 9629820
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:50:22.8918+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:25.131477
License: Public Domain

KENNARD, J., Dissenting.
The law requires that a landlord “shall” assert any claims against the security deposit of a tenant within a short period (formerly two, now three weeks) after the tenancy ends and “shall” within that period refund to the tenant any portion of the security that the landlord did not claim. (Civil Code, § 1950.5, former subd. (e), now subd. (f), italics added.) In breach of this statutory duty, the defendant landlord here illegally withheld more than $1 million in security deposited by over 10,000 residential tenants without asserting any claim against the security. Nonetheless, in the name of “equity” the majority holds that the landlord may now, 14 to 17 years after the tenancies have ended, assert claims against the tenants’ security for unpaid rent, cleaning expenses, and repair costs that the statute required the landlord to assert within 2 weeks of the end of each tenancy.
In its haste to embark on its meanderings along the byways of equity jurisprudence, the majority fails to recognize that the language and purpose of the statute preclude the result it reaches. The purpose of Civil Code section 1950.5’s carefully calibrated provisions is to compel landlords to refund security due tenants promptly without the necessity of legal action by the tenants. To ensure that this occurs, the Legislature imposed the requirement that landlords make their claims against the security within the statutory period. The inescapable corollary of the landlord’s mandatory duty to *754assert any claims within the statutory period is that after that period expires the landlord loses any further right to assert claims as setoff against the security.
The majority, however, holds that landlords who violate Civil Code section 1950.5’s requirement to set off and refund security within the statutory period may nonetheless later raise their claims as setoff against the security. I dissent because the majority’s holding ignores the statutory language, disrupts the statutory scheme, and disserves the statute’s purpose. Section 1950.5 will now become a toothless remedy.
Additionally, I would hold that the trial court abused its discretion in fashioning the class remedy. I agree with the majority, however, that the plaintiff class’s objections to the attorney fee order are premature.
I
Plaintiffs Lisa Cranberry et al. are a class of approximately 10,000 former tenants of defendants Islay Investments and its managing partner Marvin Trevillian (hereafter collectively the landlord). The class members were tenants of the landlord between 1978 and 1981. The landlord charged the tenants on average approximately $100 more for the first month of the tenancy than for each succeeding month of the tenancy.
Cranberry filed this class action contending that the excess first month charge was a security payment within the meaning of Civil Code section 1950.5; the jury agreed. During the class period, class member tenants paid the landlord over $1 million in security in the form of excess first month charges, which the landlord never refunded or accounted for upon the termination of the tenancies.
The landlord filed a cross-complaint against the class member tenants for amounts allegedly due for unpaid rent, cleaning, and repairs. The trial court dismissed the landlord’s cross-complaint because it was not properly served. The landlord also sought to assert these same claims as setoff to the security the landlord had received from the class member tenants. The trial court ruled that because the landlord had not complied with Civil Code section 1950.5, former subdivision (e)’s requirement of accounting for and refunding security within two weeks of the end of the tenancy, the landlord was not entitled to set off any claims against the security.
After trial, the court entered judgment. The judgment limited the landlord’s liability to the amount of security owed to those class members who might thereafter submit a claim, rather than imposing liability for the full amount of the security withheld from the class as a whole.
*755Reversing the trial court, the Court of Appeal held that the landlord was entitled to set off any claims against the security owed to the class member tenants. It also held that the trial court had not abused its discretion in fashioning a class remedy limiting the landlord’s liability to only the security due to those class members who might thereafter submit a claim.
II
At the times relevant to this action, Civil Code section 1950.5, former subdivision (e) provided: “The landlord may claim of the security only such amounts as are reasonably necessary to remedy tenant defaults in the payment of rent, to repair damages to the premises caused by the tenant, exclusive of ordinary wear and tear, or to clean such premises, if necessary, upon termination of the tenancy. No later than two weeks after the tenant has vacated the premises, the landlord shall furnish the tenant with an itemized written statement of the basis for, and the amount of, any security received and the disposition of such security and shall return any remaining portion of such security to the tenant.” (Civ. Code, § 1950.5, former subd. (e), italics added.)1 This version of section 1950.5, subdivision (e), applicable during the period from 1978 to 1981 relevant to this action, was enacted in 1977. (Stats. 1977, ch. 971, § 2, p. 2939.) Thereafter, the Legislature amended section 1950.5 several times, extending the landlord’s compliance period from two to three weeks and redesignating as subdivision (f) the second sentence of subdivision (e) containing the setoff-and-refund provision. Accordingly, I will hereafter refer to the setoff-and-refund provision as section 1950.5(f).
Section 1950.5 limits both the nature of the claims that a landlord may assert against the security and the time within which a landlord may assert those claims. Under the statute, within two weeks after a tenancy ends the landlord must assert any claims against the security and return any unclaimed amount.
The majority holds that, despite the landlord’s statutory duty to assert any claim against the security and to refund the balance within two weeks of the end of the tenancy, a landlord who retains the entire security without complying with this duty may assert claims for the first time as setoff in a subsequent action by the tenant to recover the security. In my view, this holding is inconsistent with the language and purpose of section 1950.5(f).
In analyzing statutory language, this court looks to “the object to be achieved and the evil to be prevented by the legislation.” (Harris v. Capital *756Growth Investors XIV (1991) 52 Cal.3d 1142, 1159 [278 Cal.Rptr. 614, 805 P.2d 873].) As the majority acknowledges, section 1950.5(f) was designed to address the evil of landlords who fail to promptly return security due the tenant at the end of the tenancy. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 746.) Recognizing the obstacles facing a former tenant seeking to recover a security deposit from a recalcitrant landlord and the former tenant’s lack of leverage over the landlord, the Legislature sought to level the playing field by in effect telling the landlord holding the security to “claim it or lose it.”
The plain language of section 1950.5(f) requires a landlord within two weeks of the end of a tenancy to notify the tenant of any claims against the security and to return any portion of the security upon which the landlord has no claim. By strictly limiting the time within which a landlord can assert a claim against the security, the Legislature has necessarily provided that the landlord forfeits any right to set off claims against the security if the landlord does not do so within the statutory period.
This reading of section 1950.5(f) accords with its purpose. Section 1950.5(f) was designed to compel landlords to routinely return security due the tenant without the necessity of legal action. In the words of the majority, section 1950.5(f) “was enacted to ensure the speedy return of security deposits on the termination of tenancy and to prevent the improper retention of such deposits.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 746.) This purpose is furthered by requiring landlords to assert their claims against the security promptly after the end of the tenancy or else lose the right to do so thereafter.
Although a landlord loses all recourse against the security by failing to assert any claims within the statutory two-week period, this does not mean that the landlord has lost all recourse against the tenant. Nothing in section 1950.5(f) suggests that, by losing the right to set off claims against the security, the landlord has also forfeited any causes of action against the tenant. A landlord wishing to pursue those claims after allowing the statutory period to elapse may do so in an independent suit against the tenant. The landlord in this case did file a cross-complaint against the class members asserting claims for unpaid rent, cleaning costs, and repair costs; the cross-complaint was dismissed, however, when the landlord failed to properly serve it.
III
The majority hinges its conclusion that a landlord does not lose the right of setoff after the statutory period expires on the following reasoning. It first contends that to deny a continuing right of setoff to the landlord who fails to *757assert claims within the statutory period would impose a “penalty” on the landlord. It then contends that, because section 1950.5, subdivision (k) (hereafter section 1950.5(k)) authorizes $600 in statutory damages to be awarded against a landlord who in bad faith unlawfully retains security, the Legislature did not intend to “penalize” landlords who without bad faith unlawfully retain security by denying them the right of setoff.2 I disagree both with the majority’s characterization of the limitations period of the landlord’s setoff right as a “penalty” and with its conclusion that the bad-faith-damages provision of section 1950.5(k) demonstrates an implicit intention by the Legislature not to terminate the landlord’s right of setoff after the landlord has failed to assert any claims within the statutory period.
The majority is wrong in characterizing the expiration of the section 1950.5(f) limitations period as a “penalty.” We do not commonly say that someone who has forfeited a claim by failing to bring it within the statute of limitations period has suffered a penalty. Under the majority’s reasoning, however, every statute of limitations would be a penalty.
Nor is a limitations period for asserting claims (such as the limitation period of section 1950.5(f)) a “penalty” in the sense in which that word was used in the case on which the majority relies, People ex rel. Van de Kamp v. American Art Enterprises, Inc. (1983) 33 Cal.3d 328, 334 [188 Cal.Rptr. 740, 656 P.2d 1170]. At issue there was a monetary fine, not a claims limitation period as is the case here. (See ibid.)
Furthermore, even if the complete loss of a claim resulting from thé running of a limitations period could properly be characterized as a penalty, it would still be incorrect to characterize the expiration of the landlord’s setoff right under section 1950.5(f) as a penalty. As explained above, the landlord whose setoff right under section 1950.5(f) lapses does not forfeit any claims against the tenant, which the landlord can still pursue in an independent action against the tenant, but only loses the right to satisfy the claims out of the security.
Even assuming that the expiration of the landlord’s right to setoff could be characterized as a penalty, it is one that arises “ ‘ “by necessary implication” ’ ” (People ex rel. Van de Kamp v. American Art Enterprises, Inc., supra, 33 Cal.3d at p. 334) from the language of section 1950.5(f). As described above, the Legislature’s imposition on landlords of a mandatory duty to assert any claims against the security within two weeks of the end of the tenancy necessarily implies that if landlords fail to do so within that *758period, they cannot do so later. To hold otherwise would render meaningless the mandatory term “shall” that the Legislature used in section 1950.5(f).
The majority is also wrong in concluding that, because section 1950.5(k) authorizes statutory damages for landlords who retain security in bad faith, the Legislature must have intended that landlords who, without acting in bad faith, unlawfully breach their mandatory duty to account for any claims against the security and to refund any remaining security should not lose the right of setoff after the statutory period expires. Section 1950.5(k) provides: “The bad faith claim or retention by a landlord ... of the security or any portion thereof in violation of this section, . . . may subject the landlord ... to statutory damages of up to six hundred dollars ($600), in addition to actual damages.”
The Legislature’s decision to impose a special consequence—statutory damages—for retention of security that is accompanied by bad faith raises no logical inference that the Legislature intended to impose no consequence whatever for retention of security in violation of section 1950.5(f) not accompanied by bad faith. There is nothing logically inconsistent about imposing separate consequences for these different types of conduct. To the contrary, in light of the legislative purpose—to secure the prompt return of tenant funds to which the landlord has no legitimate claim—it is perfectly rational and consistent for the Legislature to have imposed, as it did, loss of setoff as the basic consequence for all retention of security beyond the statutory period, and to have imposed statutory damages as a second and additional consequence for a particularly aggravated form of statutory violation consisting of improper retention of security accompanied by bad faith.
Nor, unlike People ex rel. Van de Kamp v. American Art Enterprises, Inc., supra, 33 Cal.3d 328, 334, on which the majority relies, is this a case in which, because the Legislature has provided certain penalties or consequences for a statutory violation, the issue is whether the Legislature intended those remedies to exclude other penalties or consequences. American Art was a nuisance action in which the trial court had imposed upon the defendants a $168,000 fine not expressly authorized by the nuisance statute. (Id. at p. 334.) Because the Legislature had expressly authorized injunctive relief and the sale of the offending property as remedies for a nuisance, it was unlikely that the Legislature had impliedly authorized monetary fines as an additional punishment for the same act. Here, however, in the majority’s view the Legislature has provided no consequence for a violation of the mandatory setoff-and-refund requirement not accompanied by bad faith.
By permitting a landlord who has retained the entire security without timely asserting any claims to the tenant to nonetheless set off claims in an *759action by the tenant to recover the security, the majority’s holding will render section 1950.5(f) a flimsy barrier against the evil it is designed to address—landlords who do not promptly account for any claims against the security and refund whatever security is due their tenants without the necessity of legal action by the tenant. The statutory requirements that the landlord “shall” assert claims against the security within two weeks by notifying the tenant and “shall” refund any remaining portion within two weeks are meaningless, and the purpose of the statute is frustrated, if the landlord who fails to do so can nonetheless assert those claims as setoff years later in an action by the tenant to recover the security. The carefully balanced incentives of section 1950.5, designed to ensure that landlords refund security routinely and without the necessity of court action, will accordingly be defeated.
IV
The trial court’s class action judgment required the landlord to refund only the security withheld from those class member tenants who might thereafter submit a claim against the landlord. The majority reverses the portion of the Court of Appeal’s judgment affirming the trial court’s class action remedy without reaching the issue of whether the trial court abused its discretion in fashioning that remedy. In order to provide guidance to the trial court on remand, I would reach that issue and hold that the trial court abused its discretion in ordering a class remedy that permits the landlord to retain class damages that are not claimed by individual class members.
The trial court’s decision to limit the landlord’s liability to only the amounts owed to those class members who may come forward and submit individual claims, rather than imposing liability for the full amount of unlawfully withheld security owed to the class as a whole, was an abuse of discretion, even assuming that the landlord should be permitted the right of setoff. In my view, allowing a wrongdoing defendant to retain all or part of the amount for which it is liable to the plaintiff class rarely is one of the options that a court should choose in deciding how to distribute the class recovery or dispose of the residual.
Initially, the trial court failed to distinguish between the separate issues of the determination of the amount for which a defendant is liable to the plaintiff class and the method for distribution of that amount to the class. Code of Civil Procedure section 384, cited by the majority, makes clear the distinction between the amount of a defendant’s liability to the class and the method of distribution of the class recovery (including the disposition of any unpaid residual). It first requires that “prior to the entry of any judgment in *760a class action ... the court shall determine the total amount that will be payable to all class members . . . .” (Code Civ. Proc., § 384, subd. (b), italics added.) Thereafter, “the parties shall report to the court the total amount that was actually paid to the class members. After the report is received, the court shall amend the judgment to direct the defendant to pay the sum of the unpaid residue ... in any manner the court determines is consistent with the objectives and purposes of the underlying cause of action . . . .” {Ibid.) Thus, the proper measure of the class recovery is the injury caused to the class members, not the amounts that individual class members step forward to claim.
The trial court erased the distinction between these two concepts by making the amount of the class recovery turn on the effectiveness of the distribution method it selected. Using the trial court’s formula, by definition there would never be any unpaid residuals in class actions because defendants would never have any liability for any amounts not claimed by class members. By making the landlord liable only for the security withheld from those class members who step forward to claim a refund and not for the security withheld from the class as a whole, the trial court in effect narrowed the class without notice after the trial had concluded and extinguished the causes of action of the nonclaiming class members. Instead, the trial court should have first determined the landlord’s total liability to the class as a whole and then developed a method for distributing that amount to the class members to the extent feasible and for dealing with any unclaimed residual.
A trial court has several sources of guidance in dealing with the unclaimed residual of a class recovery. As the majority acknowledges, the class action is a creature of equity, and it is a first principle of equity that a wrongdoer should not be permitted to profit from its wrongs. (See § 3517 [“No one can take advantage of his own wrong.”]; see also Shepherd, Damage Distribution in Class Actions: The Cy Pres Remedy (1972) 39 U.Chi. L.Rev. 448 [retention of unclaimed residue by the defendant results in “unjust enrichment of the defendant”].) Consequently, this court has previously held that the various methods of distributing the unpaid residual of a class recovery that go under the name of “fluid recovery” may be “essential to ensure that the policies of disgorgement or deterrence are realized” and should be utilized where appropriate to “fulfill[] the purposes of the underlying cause of action.” (State of California v. Levi Strauss & Co. (1986) 41 Cal.3d 460, 472 [224 Cal.Rptr. 605, 715 P.2d 564].)
The Legislature, in Code of Civil Procedure section 384, has expressly addressed the factors a trial court must consider in crafting a method for the disposition of the unclaimed residual of a class recovery. It has decided that “unpaid residuals in class action litigation [should be] distributed, to the *761extent possible, in a manner designed either to further the purposes of the underlying causes of action, or to promote justice for all Californians,” including distribution to child advocacy programs or to the California Legal Corps. (Code Civ. Proc., § 384, subd. (a).) Rarely will it further the purposes of the underlying action or promote justice to permit a wrongdoing defendant in a class action to simply retain for its own benefit the unpaid residual of the class recovery, and nothing in Code of Civil Procedure section 384 contemplates such a result.
Accordingly, the trial court abused its discretion when it permitted the landlord to retain the unclaimed residual of the class recovery for the landlord’s own benefit. The trial court in this case made no findings and gave no reasons to support its conclusion that the landlord should be permitted to retain the unpaid residual or that would explain why it was fair and just for the landlord to do so. Instead, the trial court simply made the conclusory assertion that “[w]e do not find that the Fluid Recovery method is necessary to fulfill the purpose of this case.” Given that it ordinarily does not further the purposes of the underlying action or promote justice to permit a defendant to retain the unpaid residual in a class action, the trial court’s unexplained decision to the contrary was an abuse of discretion. This is especially so because the landlord here had previously attempted to evade section 1950.5’s predecessor statute and to unlawfully retain security due its tenants by denominating the security a “nonrefundable cleaning fee.” (See Bauman v. Islay Investments (1973) 30 Cal.App.3d 752 [106 Cal.Rptr. 889].)
Conclusion
The Legislature enacted section 1950.5 to protect tenants, not landlords. Section 1950.5(f) sets a clear limit on the landlord’s right to set off claims against the security by requiring a landlord to assert any claims against the security within two weeks of the end of the tenancy and then refund the balance. This furthers section 1950.5’s purpose of ensuring that landlords routinely refund security due their tenants without the necessity of legal action by their tenants.
Repeatedly invoking its notion of equity, however, the majority ignores the language and purpose of section 1950.5(f) to hold that landlords do not lose their right of setoff after the expiration of the statutory period. I cannot agree with this attempt to rewrite section 1950.5(f) and eviscerate its purpose.
Moreover, the Legislature intended that those tenants who are forced to bring a lawsuit to recover their security have a simple, swift, and certain legal remedy: section 1950.5 expressly authorizes actions brought under that section to be maintained in small claims court, limits the types of claims that *762can be asserted against the security, and puts on the landlord the burden of proof as to the reasonableness of any amount claimed against the security. (§ 1950.5, subds. (e), (k), (m).) In turn, section 1950.5(f), by cutting off the landlord’s right of setoff after the two-week statutory period, assures the tenant weighing whether to bring an action to recover security that he or she will not be met by a surprise claim of setoff never before raised by the landlord.
The majority’s holding upsets this statutory scheme, for a tenant who brings an action to recover security now may be faced with unanticipated claims of setoff the landlord has never before asserted. The tenant’s action is made not only unpredictable but more complicated. Undoubtedly, in light of the majority’s creation of a landlord’s right to setoff in actions to recover security, many tenants will now conclude that it is not worth the effort to bring such an action, just as they did before section 1950.5—hardly the result the Legislature intended in enacting this consumer protection statute.
For the foregoing reasons, I would reverse the portion of the judgment of the Court of Appeal holding that the landlord may set off its claims against the illegally withheld security and the portion of the judgment holding that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in limiting the landlord’s liability to only the security due those class members who hereafter submit a claim.
The petition of plaintiffs and appellants for a rehearing was denied April 20, 1995. Kennard, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted.

 Unless otherwise noted, all further statutory references are to the Civil Code.

 The amount of statutory damages available under section 1950.5 during the period relevant to this lawsuit was $200. (§ 1950.5, former subd. (h).)