News & Insights

By Gregory Markow, partner, and Salvatore Padula, associate attorney

Unlawful detainers (UDs) are expedited lawsuits designed to remove tenants from possession of property when the tenant has breached the lease. The issue in an UD lawsuit is possession only (and up to a year’s worth of back rent). Time frames in these lawsuits are very compressed, which can cause issues for some tenants, particularly the less sophisticated ones because they can quickly result in a default judgment if the tenant does not respond on time. These tight-time frame issues have made UDs controversial in tenants’ rights circles.

In response to these concerns, a new California bill (AB 2347), which went into effect Jan. 1 of this year, provides tenants additional time to respond to eviction notices – allowing greater opportunity for tenants to seek legal counsel and prepare an adequate defense. AB 2347, authored by Assemblymember Ash Kalra, amends Sections 1167 and 1170 of the California Code of Civil Procedure and was signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom on Sept. 24, 2024.

Altering California’s eviction process, the new bill extends the deadline for a tenant/defendant in an unlawful detainer action to respond to an eviction from five calendar days to ten workdays (excluding weekends and court holidays). Aimed at mitigating the risk of tenants being evicted from their homes by default, the new law comes amid a statewide housing crisis – a result of under production and exorbitant housing costs – and following an increase in evictions precipitated by the expiration of pandemic-era tenant protections. However, its application is not limited to residential UDs – the new extended timeframes apply also in the commercial eviction context.

Pros and cons of the new bill

Proponents of the bill argue that the extended response time to UDs ensures that tenants have a fair and timely chance to present their cases – and that it is crucial to preserving tenants’ due process rights, especially given the extreme impact of eviction.

Critics have expressed concerns that the new procedures may delay the eviction process for landlords dealing with troublesome tenants and allow unpaid rent bills to accrue – costs that future renters must absorb. They also believe it may create a financial burden for tenants since the extended litigation time may result in more legal fees while incurring additional rental debt.

While it has its strengths and weaknesses one thing is clear: the new bill will essentially double the time in which a defendant may respond to a UD complaint. This will slightly slow down the unlawful detainer trial timeline and somewhat delay the entry of defaults when the tenant/defendant fails to promptly respond to a complaint. In the Southern California counties, the time span from filing a complaint to trial should now be about eight weeks, absent motion practice or other delay.

But, presumably in an effort to balance tenant and landlord interests, the same law sets strict limits on a tenant/defendant’s motion to attack an unlawful detainer complaint. Previously, a tenant/defendant could bring such a motion and they would often be set for a hearing months later, substantially delaying the unlawful detainer proceeding. Now, such motions are accelerated and must be set for hearing no more than seven court days from filing, which should eliminate much of the delay such motions have caused. Note, however, that the new deadline can be extended for good cause – so it is unclear what effect it will actually have on the delay caused by such motions, especially if trial courts adopt the practice of routinely finding good cause for extensions based on overall workloads.

Consequently, the cumulative effect of these laws may be a wash. Most UDs result in a default judgment and this new rule will slightly delay obtaining such a judgment. However, in contested UDs, the change in response time may be offset by limits on the use of motion practice to substantially delay trials.

Gregory Markow is a partner and chair of the firm’s litigation practice team, and Salvatore Padula is an associate attorney at Crosbie Gliner Schiffman Southard & Swanson LLP (CGS3). The aricle was published in The Los Angeles Daily Journal and The Daily Transcript.