For fifty bucks I could probably make this go away

Note: an unfin­ished ver­sion of this note was pre­sent­ed to Cyn­thia (whose sur­name I’m still not sure of) at about 9:15 AM on April 7^th 2015, along with mon­ey orders in the full reg­u­lar amount of rent for my apart­ment for April ($1,250.00). I did not give her the addi­tion­al­ly-demand­ed fifty dol­lars, and I received no receipts for the mon­ey orders, as had been giv­en last month. (This fact does not wor­ry me, as I have the ser­i­al num­bers and proof of pur­chase.) Cyn­thia also received copies of Cal­i­for­nia Civ­il Code Sec­tion 2 – 21 and a copy of the Court’s deci­sion in Oroz­co v Casimiro, ref­er­enced here.

I have been informed that with­out the demand­ed $50.00, my rent is unpaid.

Accord­ing to Feb­ru­ary 25^th writ­ten instruc­tions from Lagoon Bay Invest­ments, pay­ment is to be made by check or mon­ey order specif­i­cal­ly not cash. For the first few months, evening col­lec­tions are sup­posed to hap­pen from the first to the fifth. This is awk­ward, out of the ordi­nary, and frankly just plain unpro­fes­sion­al. But I’m OK with let­ting them fig­ure things out as they go along. Or I was, any­how.

In-per­son col­lec­tions have been attempt­ed by Cyn­thia and Ozwal­do on Sun­day, March 1^st of 2015 and again on Sun­day, April 5^th of 2015. It should be not­ed that no attempt was made to col­lect the rent dur­ing cus­tom­ary hours of busi­ness or ear­ly evening on Wednes­day, April 1^st 2015, Thurs­day, April 2^nd 2015, or Fri­day, April 3^rd 2015. The first and only oppor­tu­ni­ty to make pay­ment of rent was pre­sent­ed on Sun­day, April 5^th 2015.¹

Civ­il code sec­tion 2 – 21, 7.1 (b) and ©: Every Saturday and Every Sunday are con­sid­ered non-busi­ness days.²

On both the occa­sions of March 1^st of 2015 and April 5^th of 2015, I expressed polite dis­may at being dis­turbed on a Sun­day, a non-busi­ness day. On April the 5^th, I informed Cyn­thia and Ozwal­do that it was unlike­ly that I would be able to obtain the nec­es­sary mon­ey orders before the end of the day, owing to the com­bi­na­tion of being a Sun­day, nor­mal­ly a non-busi­ness day, but addi­tion­al­ly being East­er Sun­day, a day when busi­ness­es which oth­er­wise might be open on Sun­days would be closed. I offered to present pay­ment on April 6^th, as was right­ly my option.³ This offer was express­ly refused. Cyn­thia informed me that the only option was to make pay­ment pri­or to the end of the day on April 5^th.

I told Cyn­thia and Ozwal­do that I would look for a place of busi­ness that would sell the nec­es­sary mon­ey orders, and tele­phone as soon as I had the mon­ey order in hand. How­ev­er, as expect­ed, my search for a busi­ness which would issue mon­ey orders on East­er Sun­day was not successful.

Though I still believed that I was cor­rect that it was my right­ful option to present pay­ment on the first busi­ness day fol­low­ing the non-busi­ness day on which pay­ment was expect­ed, I gave Cyn­thia the ben­e­fit of the doubt in this mat­ter and con­sid­ered myself to be late for most of April 6^th. In the course of the day’s busi­ness, I pro­cured mon­ey orders total­ing the spec­i­fied rent for April: $1,250.00. A few min­utes lat­er, I left a voice­mail mes­sage stat­ing that I would be on my way home and that I would be hap­py to make a detour to bring this pay­ment direct­ly to Cyn­thia and/or Ozwaldo.

There was no response to my phone call on the evening of April 6^th, but when I arrived home there was a hand­writ­ten note from Cyn­thia which stat­ed that a “Late Fee” of $50.00 was being added, and that the addi­tion­al $50.00 would “need” to be paid.

Brief research online yields numer­ous exam­ples of land­lords refus­ing to accept pay­ment of the nor­mal rent if not accom­pa­nied by addi­tion­al pay­ments demand­ed, whether right­ful­ly or wrong­ful­ly. It is against this pos­si­bil­i­ty that I have doc­u­ment­ed these events, and print­ed out Cal­i­for­nia Civ­il Code Sec­tion 2 – 21 and the 2004 judg­ment by the Appel­late Divi­sion of the Supe­ri­or Court of the relevent case known as Oroz­co v Casimiro.

In declin­ing to pay the demand­ed $50.00, I assert the following:

• It was improp­er of Lagoon Bay Invest­ments, LLC to pro­vide no option for accept­ing pay­ment oth­er than to attempt col­lec­tion at on non-busi­ness days.
• To pay on Mon­day April 6^th in lieu of Sun­day April 5^th should not be con­sid­ered late.
• Any addi­tion­al penal­ty demand made on Mon­day, April 6^th was improp­er, should not be con­sid­ered valid, and can not be enforced.
• Prop­er pay­ment was offered on Mon­day, April 6^th, includ­ing an offer to deliv­er the pay­ment rather than meet at the property.
• Pay­ment of $1,250.00 on April 7^th 2015 must be accept­ed by Lagoon Bay Invest­ments, LLC or their rep­re­sen­ta­tives as the April 2015 rent for Apart­ment H, 838 Cedar Street in Alame­da CA, and con­sid­ered paid in full.

There are addi­tion­al considerations.

There is no pro­vi­sion for any kind of late penal­ty in the exist­ing lease. Were a new pro­vi­sion to be added it would be an alter­ation to the agree­ment-in-place. At the very least, 30 days warn­ing of such a change would be required.

Fur­ther­more, accord­ing to the doc­u­ment Cal­i­for­nia Ten­ants, A Guide to Res­i­den­tial Ten­ants’ and Land­lords’ Rights and Respon­si­bil­i­ties pub­lished by the Cal­i­for­nia Depart­ment of Con­sumer Affairs:

A rental agree­ment can­not include a pre-deter­mined late fee. The excep­tion to this rule is when it would be dif­fi­cult to fig­ure out the actu­al cost to the land­lord caused by the late rent pay­ment. Even then, the pre-deter­mined late fee should not be more than a rea­son­able esti­mate of costs that the land­lord will face as a result of the late pay­ment. A late fee that is so high that it amounts to a penal­ty is not legal­ly valid.⁴

There­fore, if Lagoon Bay Invest­ments, LLC wish­es to make some form of demand for addi­tion­al pay­ment in the event of a future inci­dent, one of two things will have to happen:

1. They and I will have to come to an agree­ment in writ­ing about a rea­son­able amount to con­sid­er the default for “liq­ui­dat­ed damages”. 
2. In the absence of such an agree­ment, receipts and pos­si­bly oth­er evi­dence of spe­cif­ic and enu­mer­able dam­ages as the result of the claimed late­ness in pay­ment will have to accom­pa­ny any such demand.

In turn, I must also insist on the fol­low­ing in my future deal­ings with Lagoon Bay Invest­ments, LLC: first that ordi­nary busi­ness be con­duct­ed only on reg­u­lar busi­ness days. Sec­ond, that I be per­mit­ted to make future pay­ments by mail, like every oth­er renter.

Final­ly, I pre­sume no ill will on the part of Lagoon Bay Invest­ments, LLC. In the absence of any evi­dence to the con­trary, I assume that this sit­u­a­tion is due sole­ly to inex­pe­ri­ence in the man­age­ment of rental real estate, and to igno­rance of Cal­i­for­nia law in this mat­ter. It is my gen­uine hope that these mate­ri­als prove instruc­tive and that this inci­dent will not impede the estab­lish­ment and devel­op­ment of a hap­py landlord/tenant relationship.

It will, how­ev­er, be inter­est­ing to see whether their next move is to hand me a three day notice.