Mr. Dantes is actively involved in teaching and writing and has finished his first book to share his experiences and teach young lawyers to become better lawyers.
We sincerely believe David Dantes is the best landlord-tenant lawyer in Southern California.
Here are some examples of why that is.
He’ll soon be selling the first of two or three books on how to become a better lawyer, called "Winning Litigation: Powerful Tools and Techniques You Didn’t Learn in Law School", as an ebook.
Some reviews of it:
"A must read for every law student. The State Bar should increase its fees so it can afford to give a copy of this book to every new lawyer when it hands him his license."
-- Patricia Goldsmith, attorney licensed in California for many years, re: "Winning Litigation", Spring 2008
"Straight from the school of hard knocks. There are two ways to learn this. Spend 30 years in the trenches or read this book. Save the time, read the book."
-- Dan Castro, attorney licensed in Texas for many years, published author who charges $ 5,000.00 to give a speech based on his book "Critical Choices That Change Lives: How Heroes Turn Tragedy into Triumph", re: "Winning Litigation", 2007
The second book, "Winning Further Litigation", about half finished, will be about the same length.
If he decides to write "Beyond Winning Litigation:" that will be a bit shorter.
He started working in an eviction "mill" in 1984.
He quickly figured out that the real money in representing landlords was doing the evictions on the assembly line.
So nobody wanted to be stuck in a long, messy trial.
So he immediately set out to become the specialist in those cases.
He handled one case where the client didn’t want to hire him so he told her and her friend to take her file and his $ 5,000.00 check and go home and sleep on it. The friend said they couldn't do that.
They'd consulted X, Y and Z, all three landlord specialists in L. A., and all known to Mr. Dantes and they’d all said that she’d turned the case into such a fiasco that "the only lawyer that will substitute in on it now is David Dantes".
So he took the case to trial, won it his favorite way of winning, one of many tactics he invented, which he calls "Winning by Losing" (buy a copy of "Winning Litigation" and look it up), got the tenant to move out, without having to pay him (which was what he was holding out for), the landlady doubled the rent, and he refunded 74 % of the advance.
He handled a constructive eviction case ("You made my life such a living hell that I HAD to move out") in Limited Jurisdiction Court (with a maximum on the judgment of
$ 25,000.00)
And the judge waved it off as a Small Claims case ($ 7,500.00 maximum).
The jury tried to award our client $ 50,000.00!
The jurors had to answer six questions. They answered all six in our favor. Unanymously.
But we HAD to settle for the maximum the law allows.
The longest eviction trial he handled, between the sleaziest lawyer he ever opposed and the laziest judge he ever went in front of, ran twelve (12) Days! Over non-payment of rent!
He later learned that the tenant's lawyer had handled the entire twelve-day trial while on suspension from the State Bar.
We can only assume he's no longer a lawyer.
Sure enough. Wejust looked him up. The FOURTH time he was set to be disciplined he resigned before they could disbar him.
In another case the jury had to answer fifteen (15) questions for it to rule on our defense of "estoppel" (never mind what that is; the jurors didn’t know either when they were handed the case).
They ruled in our favor unanimously on every question. That's 180 YES and 0 NO's.
That same case, unlike the average eviction that’s over in no more than two months, took six (6) days shy of three years from the date the landlord’s lawyer filed it until Mr. Dantes went in for the final attorney’s fees motion
We won all four rounds and, because our client had had three lawyers, all billing on an hourly basis, for nearly three years, we settled that motion for $ 65,000.00.
Check out our Forms page with both fillable and non-fillable forms and our links in here to all the rent control boards in L. A. County and all the apartment owners’ associations in Southern California.
We also boast the best:
Process servers,
Research attorney,
Locksmith, and Collection agency in Southern California.
There are only four (4) measures of how good process servers are:
1. How fast they serve;
2. How fast they get us the Proof of Service;
Our process servers work for many of the largest eviction specialists in Southern California so they know that the most important thing in an eviction is speed.
3. How many motions to quash we get from tenants; and
4. How many we lose.
In all the years we’ve been using this service we’ve had one (1) motion to quash. We won it!
Our research attorney, who we don’t need in most cases, is the best we’ve found since Mr. Dantes started working for lawyers while still in law school 35 years ago. And we've tried many.
Our locksmith agreed to take possession of a house in the East L. A. area so the owner wouldn’t have to send her broker from the west side.
When the tenants broke back in he drove back there and called the police.
When they asked him why he called at 9:00 o’clock at night he explained that he’d had to drive back from Palmdale! -- over 70! miles -- to get there.
He also referred the owner to a very competent and very inexpensive handyman to fix it up for the sale.
And to patch and paint a house for a quick sale and keep the cost in four (4) figures, that’s all you need.
On the other hand, if you need the company that designed and built tens, even hundreds, of thousands of square feet for the corporate headquarters of such companies as Google, Yahoo, Citibank and eHarmony, that company has been both a client of, and a witness for, us.
Call us if you need a referral.
And our collection agency just hit a tenant’s bank account in the sum of $ 12,000.00 on a judgment from 1973 on an eviction from 1970.
That’s a 37-year-old judgment!
The tenant spent MONTHS trying to convince the judge that she hadn’t noticed being personally served, posted by the Sheriff, or being locked out.
Our Opposition, drafted by our research attorney, pointed out that, in order to believe her the judge had to believe ALL of over 30 facts.
The client got the money just in time for Christmas.
And because of the economy, we just lowered both our hourly rate and our flat fees.
So call us before the economy bounces back and we raise them again.