Tenant ordered to pay $42,500 but new rent dispute case remains unresolved

<p>Gwen Smith seemed like the perfect tenant for Barbara Wilt's Sebastopol apartment.</p><p>The 53-year-old single mother was articulate and bright, had good references and talked about using her law degree to help crime victims and other women raising children on their own.</p><p>But what Wilt didn't know when she handed over the keys to her converted garage on Brookside Avenue in 2008 was that she was opening her doors to trouble.</p><p>“In this case, Gwen Smith runs a scam pattern,” attorney Lisa Gygax said in a trial brief filed in Sonoma County Superior Court. “She seeks a kind landlord, moves in and never intends to pay anything but the first month's rent,” the attorney said in her filing.</p><p>After a months-long legal battle to recoup unpaid rent and utilities, Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Elliot Daum on Thursday ordered Smith to pay Wilt $42,500 in damages — agreeing to a requested tripling of actual damages on grounds Smith acted with “malicious and manipulative” intent, according to court documents.</p><p>Smith denied that she is guilty of any wrongdoing now or in the past. She accused Wilt and her current landlord of defaming her for speaking out about what she called their substandard housing and said she is standing up for the rights of other renters.</p><p>“There's a housing crisis in Sonoma County,” Smith said. “There are building inspectors and people in positions of responsibility not doing their jobs. I am fighting not only for myself ... but for people who have been similarly judged by their socioeconomic condition.” </p><p>Her lawyer, Gary Levinson of Orange County, called Daum's ruling unlawful and said he would file a motion to set aside the default judgment.</p><p>“I'm very disturbed by the judge's behavior,” said Levinson, who said he was not in court because of another trial in Orange County. “It's very improper.”</p><p>Since Smith moved out of the apartment a little more than a year ago, she and her 15-year-old son have taken up residence in a converted barn near Graton and stopped paying the $1,200 rent in June, owner and landlord Connie Cook said.</p><p>Cook, a retired dance therapist, said she has been embroiled in a costly legal battle to try to get Smith evicted ever since but has been bogged down by Smith's numerous appeals. In the meantime, Cook has lost the tenants who lived below Smith, and without income from the property she fears losing the house to foreclosure.</p><p>The eviction case is pending before Presiding Judge Gary Nadler.</p><p>“I'm possibly going to have to file bankruptcy and lose my property because of her,” said a tearful Cook, standing outside the Douglas Lane rental, while Smith and her son remained inside.</p><p>Smith, a paralegal who isn't licensed to practice law in California, has faced eviction cases in Wisconsin and Arizona in addition to the two in California, said Wilt's lawyer, Lisa Gygax, in court documents.</p><p>A Wisconsin landlord had an $80,000 judgment against her in 2005, the documents state, though further details were not immediately available.</p><p>Smith seems to focus on women landlords who might sympathize with the plight of single mothers, Gygax said. Often, they are trying to rent a room or converted garage to subsidize their own modest incomes, she said.</p><p>The judgment Thursday goes back to August of 2008, when Smith answered a Craigslist posting by Wilt and applied to rent her garage apartment for $900 a month, utilities included, according to court documents.</p><p>Wilt said she seemed well-meaning and responsible and expressed similar political views. She said she liked the woman because she was raising a son on her own.</p><p>After checking her references — her lawyer and a Petaluma architect — Wilt rented to her and almost immediately regretted it, she said. Smith changed the locks, and there were reports from other renters of disturbances by Smith, according to court documents.</p><p>The other renters on the property eventually moved out, Wilt said.</p><p>When the rent came due in October of 2008, Smith did not pay. Instead, Wilt received a letter containing accusations of poor conditions.</p><p>Wilt acknowledged electrical and plumbing violations in the converted garage after receiving notice from Sebastopol building officials and said she made the necessary corrections.</p><p>But over a period of the next four months, there was conflict and accusations that resulted in a suit by Wilt seeking rent and a countersuit by Smith.</p><p>Daum dismissed the countersuit as part of the decision Thursday.</p><p>In February 2009, Smith moved to her new place near Graton, Wilts said.</p><p>While going through her legal challenges, Wilt tracked down Smith's new landlord and discovered she was going through similar difficulties.</p><p>Smith had refused to pay rent on grounds the red barn at the end of a country lane was uninhabitable, Cook said. Eviction proceedings are under way for nonpayment of rent, and Cook's lawyer, Jim Sansone, said it could be months before the matter is resolved.</p><p>“The whole point is delay, and Miss Cook's property is now in foreclosure. She relies on the rent to make the mortgage.”</p>