ExperienceProperty Rights & Rent Control

  • In California Apartment Ass’n v. City of Pasadena, 117 Cal. App. 5th 187 (2025), denied, 2026 Cal. LEXIS 1648 (Cal., Apr. 1, 2026), the firm successfully represented the plaintiffs in challenging a number of provisions of Pasadena’s Measure H, enacted in 2022, as preempted by various state laws, including the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, the Ellis Act, and the state Unlawful Detainer Act.
  • In California Apartment Association v. County of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Cty. Superior Court, Case No. 23STCP01114 (2024), the firm represented the California Apartment Association in a successful to Los Angeles County’s newly enacted requirement that a landlord give 30 days’ notice before evicting due to non-payment of COVID-19 rental debt, rather than the three days prescribed by Code of Civil Procedure § 1161, on the ground that it was preempted.
  • In Orange Cty. Apartment House Ass’n, Inc. dba Apartment Ass’n of Orange Cty. v. City of Santa Ana, et al., Orange Cty. Superior Court, Case No. 30-2023-01308094-CU-JR-CXC (2025), the firm won a judgment on behalf of the Apartment Association of Orange County, holding that the Rental Housing Board created by the City of Santa Ana, which guaranteed tenants a supermajority of the seats on the Board, violated due process.
  • In Fisher v. City of Berkeley, 37 Cal. 3d 644 (1985), the firm represented a group of Berkeley property-owners before the California Supreme Court in a case that established that rental property-owners are constitutionally entitled to periodic rent adjustments to offset the erosionary effects of inflation.
  • On behalf of representatives of the rental housing industry, Nielsen Merksamer successfully challenged a 2013 San Francisco ordinance that imposed a ten-year ban on unit mergers, on the ground that the ban was preempted by the Ellis Act, in San Francisco Apartment Assn., et al. v. City and County of San Francisco, 3 Cal. App. 5th 463 (2016).
  • On behalf of representatives of the rental housing industry, Nielsen Merksamer successfully brought suit to invalidate key provisions of San Francisco’s “anti-harassment” ordinance for violating the judicial powers clause of the California Constitution and the First Amendment, in Larson v. City and County of San Francisco, 192 Cal. App. 4th 1263 (2011).
  • In the landmark case of Cwynar v. City & County of San Francisco, 90 Cal. App. 4th 637 (2001), the firm successfully challenged an San Francisco rent control ordinance that precluded landlords from evicting a tenant from a rental unit so that the unit could be used as a residence by the owner or a close family member represented an unconstitutional physical taking of property.
  • Nielsen Merksamer attorneys represented amicus curiae in federal court in a successful takings challenge to a 2014 San Francisco ordinance that requiring rental property-owners to pay evicted tenants two years’ rent differential between their prior and new housing units.
  • In a number of cases against local rent boards, the firm has successfully represented landlords in enforcing their rights under the Costa-Hawkins vacancy decontrol law to increase rents to market rates upon vacancy. In each case the rent boards sought to construe Costa-Hawkins narrowly to limit the ability of landlords to obtain rent increases.
  • In Rose Ventures III v. City of Oakland Housing, Residential Rent and Relocation Board, a suit brought in Alameda County Superior Court, we successfully represented the owner of luxury apartment buildings, obtaining a court order overturning a Rent Board decision that granted tenants hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent reductions for alleged “reductions in service.” On remand to the rent board, the rent reductions were pared back by 80% of the original amounts awarded.