How To LA: LA Eviction Law Firm Was Caught Faking Cases In Court. Did They Misuse AI? (And Other Headlines)

Are you familiar with the name Dennis Block? His firm, Dennis P. Block and Associates, has been the go-to for many landlords in Southern California seeking to evict their tenants.

Recently, not only did his firm lose a case, it was sanctioned for submitting a court filing a judge said was “rife with inaccurate and false statements.”

Dennis Block runs what he says is California’s “leading eviction law firm.” A judge said legal citations submitted in Block's name for a recent case were fake.

My colleague David Wagner took a deeper look into the practices of the law firm run by a man who once said that he’d “evicted more tenants than any other human being on the planet Earth.”

The court never got to the bottom of exactly how the filing — which cited two fake cases — was prepared. Six legal experts told LAist they could think of a likely explanation: misuse of a generative AI program. Read the investigation here.

Stay spooky and cool, L.A. There’s more news below — just keep reading.

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(After you stop hitting snooze)

• California received $5 billion in federal relief money to help childcares from having to shut their doors during the pandemic, but that funding expired Sept. 30. But experts say California might be able to stave off the worst of the cliff, at least in the short-term, because of state-level measures in this fiscal year’s budget.
• Five L.A. County libraries started offering free doses of naloxone, otherwise known as Narcan, on Wednesday. People can pick up one dose of the opioid overdose treatment after watching a brief video on how to use it. They will not be asked for ID or proof of insurance.
• In 1932, the great Mexican artist David Siqueiros painted a mural on Olvera Street called "América Tropical," but it was quickly whitewashed for its political message. A new documentary tells its story.
• Earlier this year, a grassroots group of Pasadena residents successfully pushed the city to pass a policy goal of getting 100% of its electricity from carbon-free sources by 2030. On Tuesday, a city committee took a significant step to figuring out exactly how to do that.
• NASA is about to launch a spacecraft on a nearly six-year journey to a strange asteroid that, unlike most space rocks, seems largely to be made of metal.
• At California State University, Long Beach, students are reeling from the violence in Israel and Palestine. As they rally, they worry about their own safety, too.

(more news headlines here)

Wait... one more thing

LA's Regional Theaters Seek Financial Help From Washington

Interior of the Pasadena Playhouse.

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Jeff Lorch

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Courtesy of Pasadena Playhouse

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American regional theaters were hit hard during the pandemic and Los Angeles’s rich and storied theater scene is not immune to the crisis. In June, we wrote about how regional theaters were struggling to pre-pandemic stability, with the Center Theatre Group (CTG) announcing it was putting a pause on programming at the Mark Taper Forum, citing increasing production costs and significantly reduced ticket revenue.

And now Snehal Desai, artistic director of Center Theatre Group, and Danny Feldman, producing artistic director of the Pasadena Playhouse, are lobbying for financial support in Washington. They’re part of more than 100 regional theaters from all 50 states who have banded together to form the Professional Non-Profit Theater Coalition (PNTC).

Desai and Feldman joined LAist’s daily news program, AirTalk with Larry Mantle, to discuss the issues their theaters are facing and how they’re tackling the crisis. Read the story or listen to the interview here.