Bartlett Street fire victims suing former landlord

Tenants of a Mission apartment building that burned in April have sued their former landlord for negligence, accusing him of failing to address an array of deplorable conditions including dangerous wiring that led to the fire.

In their complaint filed in San Francisco County Superior Court May 12, plaintiffs Erma Kyriakos, Judy Ordonez and Brian Roper allege that the two-alarm fire that destroyed 517 and 519 Bartlett Street started in the wiring to a dryer that all of the tenants had access to. (Full disclosure: Kyriakos is a personal acquaintance.)

The tenants also accuse landlord Steven Silver of fraud, among other things, and claim that conditions inside 517 and 519 Bartlett Street had become so bad that “mice had eaten holes through the walls leaving exposed openings in the wall to the outside.

“Defendants … permitted the premises to deteriorate into a dilapidated, substandard, untenable and uninhabitable state in bad faith,” their complaint said.

Bill Ford, the San Rafael-based attorney representing Silver, said his client denies the allegations. To that end, Silver filed a cross complaint last month seeking damages and putting the blame for the April 8 fire on the renters. It states the dryer did not belong to Silver, he was unaware of problems with it, and it likely malfunctioned due to overheating and/or excessive lint buildup.

“Cross-complainant is informed and believes and thereon alleges that several days before the fire, and on the day of the fire, the dryer was making very loud grinding and/or banging noises, which could be heard by neighbors in the adjacent building,” the cross-complaint read, “yet cross-defendants took no safety precautions with respect to the dryer and continued to use the dryer and were using the dryer on the day of the fire.”

One of a number of fires in the Mission since last fall, the blaze broke out on Bartlett near Cesar Chavez Street around 12:45 p.m. and was brought under control within an hour, according to news reports at the time. Reading from a fire report, fire department spokeswoman Mindy Talmadge told Capp Street Crap in late April that the fire was accidental and originated in the third floor northeast laundry room, “unspecified fault or faults of a natural gas supplied drier most likely the cause.”

Kyriakos, Ordonez and Roper are seeking in excess of $25,000. They allege that two rooms in the basement were built without permits which the Department of Building Inspection cited Silver for. Silver then removed the kitchen from that illegal third unit, claimed the rooms in it were a “play room” and re-rented them under a “false master tenant,” Jeff Silver, the complaint said.

According to the plaintiffs, parts of the building also had no heating source; it had no smoke detectors or carbon monoxide sensors and was plagued with mold and vermin problems including cockroaches. At times, there was either no hot water or brown water.

“The subject premises receives electricity from the original electrical system of the two family residence,” the complaint also said. “The wiring is not code compliant, had been improperly installed, and posed a dangerous fire hazard.”

The cross complaint, however, said it was the tenants who should have been more vigilant.

“Cross defendants knew or should have known the dryer was in a dangerous condition given the loud grinding or banging noises it was making,” it read.