An already protracted eviction process just got longer as tenants will be allowed ten days to respond to eviction actions, among other changes to the law.
Tenants’ advocates are at it again. Under current law, tenants have five days to file an answer to an eviction answer, excluding Saturdays, Sundays, and judicial holidays. Now it’s ten.
By amending Sections 1167 and 1170 of the Code of Civil Procedure, California lawmakers have changed the eviction timeline by giving tenants five extra days to respond to an unlawful detainer action. AB 2347 was signed into law by Governor Newsom and goes into effect in 2025.
Not to be too technical, but eviction actions are what we call “summary proceedings” and are swifter than most other civil cases. But too swift, according to tenants’ advocates. Proponents of the bill successfully argued that tenants do not have ample time to be heard. They also claim that many landlords do not properly serve tenants with the requisite summons and complaints.
Not only does the legislation expand the timeline for tenants to respond from five days to ten but it also requires proof of service to be filed at least three days before a landlord may request a default judgment.
Yet all is not lost.
The bill also shortens the timeline that applies to a type of motion a tenant attorney is prone to file to delay the eviction, called a demurrer. From our experience, these stalling tactics are just clever smoke and mirrors used to delay the eviction and ratchet up legal costs to force housing providers into a settlement.
Read our earlier thoughts on tenant attorneys who unnecessarily drive up the cost of litigation »
Our takeaways
Indeed, the response period for tenants to respond to tenants is uniquely short and there are a vast number of cases that end up in default judgments because the tenants do not respond to an unlawful detainer action in a timely manner.
Can landlords live with an extra five days to allow the tenant to chime in once an eviction action begins? We suppose so. But we already have a lengthy eviction process. We are often asked how long the eviction process takes, and while we can throw out ballpark figures, we have no certainty. The biggest determinant of our client’s success is which attorney the tenant gets and how hard they fight.
The larger concern we have is the increased scrutiny and additional requirements to serve eviction notices. In every time and era, Bornstein Law has advised housing providers to properly draft and serve notices, but this new law adds teeth to it.
Rest assured that tenants’ attorneys will take full advantage of AB 2347 to find procedural mistakes in notices like a heat-seeking missile. Already adept at identifying landlording mistakes, the new law will allow the legal counsel of tenants (often represented at no charge) to delay or tank an eviction action.
This law is just the latest challenge for housing providers who have a target on their backs, but with proper counsel, housing providers can follow the law, avoid pitfalls, and perfect the right to evict without procedural errors.