He's Liked, Despised, Respected

"Jonathan Rose," said one landlord lawyer, "is a brilliant attorney." But another says he abuses the jury trial system and forces landlords to pay double or triple the legal fees they're used to paying. The U-M campus branch of the county's Legal Aid Society, under his shepherding, "takes small complaints and make mountains out of a molehills and then use them to whip a landlord and get three or four times the amount of money out of him," landlords' attorneys complain. Rose, the 33-year-old director of the campus LAS, has become the nemesis of the close-knit legal community who represent the city's major rental property owners. They gripe about him, criticize him, like him, despise him, respect him and question his conduct. To a man, the landlord lawyers who talked to The News seem to cherish a vain hope that he can be wished out of their hair. The,y seem resigned to the fact that he will not be dissuaded in his resolve to slay dragons in the courtrooms of Ann Arbor. " Members of the jury," began Rose in closing arguments in a 1973 trial, "The landlord-tenant relationship is the last vestige of feudalism . . ." Rose went on to say that because land owners have enough money for down payments, they are the privileged ones who can buy property. Part of every rental charge is fair, he contended, because it's payment for services. But part of it, he said, is simply because the landlord owns property. The landlord is able to take advantage of rising values to make money and of tax values to make him more money. Perhaps this is fair too. Perhaps we question it." Jonathon Rose, said one landlord's lawyer, "is more than over-zealous. He is one of the most dedicated, evangelical persons I've ever run across. He believes firmly and strongly in these things. He is a crusader for tenants' rights. Landlords, he continued, have the same complaints against Jonathan Rose "that General Motors would have against Ralph Nader. He is a reactionary, and so is, Jonathan. He pushes so hard to get to the middle. Some attorneys are scummy, under-handed sons-of-bitches. John is not." One attorney observed that lawyers in the private bar won't accept a case if the chances of winning it are, say, 10 per cent. "John Rose says that's no reason not to bring it." Another referred to a case in which a student moved out of an apartment where repair was an issue; Rose contends that often happens when repairs are contested and the case drags on. The trial was held anyway. "He wasn't trying a case for a client, complained the attorney. He was out trying a case for Jonathan Rose. That s my objection. Jonathan Rose is not doing it for the benefit of a specific client of furthering the cause of tenants m general. Jonathan Rose is out swinging at windmills." "It is my opinion, after five years of professional dealings with Mr. Rose," continued on page 13 Rose Made His Mark In Detroit said another local attorney who represents rental housing interests, "that his only motive is4to enforce his clients' rights and the landlords' obligations under the housing laws." Says Rose himself: "We try to serve every client as well as we can, and occasionally, when we have the opportunity, we try and are sometimes able to win a legal precedent that will help other people in the same situation as our client. "To sometimes attempt to make a little bit of law reform is certainly not inconsistent with the accomplishment' of the stated goals of our client." A court decision in one such case set a precedent limiting the amount of money a tenant must put into escrow while withholding rent in order to force repair issues into court. In Detroit, where Rose grew up, he has made his mark: he was a neighborhood legal services attorney there, and he proposed the establishment of a landlord tenant legal aid office through Common Pleas Court, which at one time handled rental disputes. Angered over eviction notices written in complex legal language, he was part of a" Michigan Supreme Court panel which drew up "street talk" understand what was happening if eviction proceedings began. Those forms have blazed new ground in landlord-tenant court procedures across the country. In one Detroit case, Rose shook the foundation of the real estate speculation scheme that later made national headlines as the infamous scandal involving bribery of federal appraisers by real estate "horse traders." In a case involving an ADC family who had purchased a defective home, Rose and his mother who is a lawyer succeeded in bringing to the witness stand - and grilling - the first FHA appraiser ever questioned under oath in the unfolding story of those abuses. His testimony revealed he was not familiar with the city's building code, and Rose won -- after a four-month trial, the longest in Common Pleas Court history -- a substantial settlement (including an up-to-code home) after the family turned down a lesser one. That case is regarded as having published a precedent never before recognized by the courts: that a home buyer could recover damages if a seller knowingly defrauded a hapless buyer who assumed that appraisal meant code approval. The broker in that case, represented by one of the top real estate attorneys in Detroit, later entered guilty pleas to two charges of bribing an FHA appraiser. Another significant law reform case Rose won involved what was called "self-help evictions." Before his challenge to this concept landlords were allowed to simply move a tenant belongings out of an apartment. Rose encountered such a case while doing Legal Aid work in Detroit. He took it to court and won verdicts on both the Common Pleas and Circuit Court levels. Afterwards, Legal Aid attorneys throughout the state began challenging "self-help evictions" and, using Rose's precedent, won similar victories. Good landlords are not bothered by Jonathan Rose, said one close observer of the Ann Arbor situation. It is usually the "vulnerable ones," those who are slow with repairs and maintenance, who deeply resent him. One landlord's attorney said there were "a lot of inequities" in the landlord-tenant situation in Ann Arbor before the rent strike of the late 1960s. There were several "real rascal landlords," said the attorney, and some were driven out of business. During that strike, said Rose, "the quality of maintenance tremendously. Lawyers advised landlords to respond to every legitimate request for maintenance and to do it properly, and we know they did that." A 1965 graduate of the U-M, Rose received his law degree from the University of Detroit in 1969. His brother, Jeremy, is an attorney in Ann Arbor, and their mother, Dora, is a Detroit attorney. She played, a role in securing the key testimony of the federal appraiser in that Detroit case. A Wayne State University professor, Mark Stickgold, told The News that Rose is recognized as one of the leading young housing attorneys in the nation. He was , offered the directorship of the Detroit Landlord-Tenant Legal Aid Office he helped establish, "but he loved Ann Arbor too much to leave it." Rose, who lives in Ann Arbor rental housing, said if he were in private practice he would have no scruples about presenting a landlord who charged fair rents. Most charge "as much as they can get," he says, although "there are a few wonderful, notable exceptions." "I couldn't possibly represent banks, or collection agencies or heroin dealers," he says. "Most legal aid lawyers feel the same way. That's why they're legal aid lawyers in the first place." "A lot of people have a passionate desire for social justice. If I differ from some people it's because I have a belief in the attainability of social justice." On the wall of his almost-shabby LAS office in the Michigan Union, there's a framed picture of a bumblebee. It's against all the laws of aerodynamics for the bumblebee to fly, says an inscription under the faded drawing. The bumblebee tries -- and succeeds -- at flying any. way, without weighing the odds. The picture belonged to his father, Saul, now deceased. To his son, the picture represents optimism, a belief that things can be done regardless of what people say. "I like the bumblebee," he said.