Buckhart v. San Francisco Residential Rent Stabilization & Arbitration Board

Opinion

ELKINGTON, J.

Defendants San Francisco Residential Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Board (Board), and real party in interest Lynn McDonald (Ms. McDonald), appeal from a judgment of the superior court granting the Code of Civil Procedure section 1094.5 application of plaintiff Norman C. Buckhart (Buckhart) for a writ of mandate requiring the Board to set aside its decision in favor of Ms. McDonald, and to enter a decision in favor of Buckhart.

We state certain of the material factual-procedural circumstances of the appeal as they appear uncontroverted by the parties’ briefs, and concessions of the Board.

San Francisco has a residential rent control ordinance (Ordinance) which treats a decrease in “housing services” during one’s tenancy as a forbidden rental increase. Disputes between a landlord and tenant are heard and determined

at a hearing

by a hearing officer. At the

hearing

the parties will “offer . . . such . . .

evidence

as may be pertinent to the proceedings. . . .

A record of the proceedings must be maintained

.... Based upon the

evidence

presented at the

hearing . . .

the hearing officer . . . shall make written findings of fact.” But for the “right of appeal” the decisions of the hearing officer are “final.” (For reasons as will soon appear the italics of this paragraph is supplied by us.)

It had been the custom of the Board not to have the evidence and proceedings reported. Such evidence and proceedings were preserved by a tape-recording device. The tape recordings were not ordinarily transcribed. Instead, it was the practice of the Board, upon a request for the administrative record by a person aggrieved who has filed a Code of Civil Procedure section 1094.5 petition for mandate, to gather up such papers of the case as were availably

without any record of the testimony and oral proceedings of the required hearing,