17
The litigation privilege is “not without limit,” as the Action Apartment court took
pains to point out. (Action Apartment, supra, 41 Cal.4th at p. 1242.) Because recognition
of the privilege here would neuter section 1942.5 by removing eviction from the statutory
remedy of retaliatory eviction, we view the clash between section 47, subdivision (b), on the
one hand, and section 1942.5, subdivisions (d) and (h), on the other, as irreconcilable. To
be consistent with the high court’s guidance that we give section 1942.5 a liberal
construction designed to achieve the legislative purpose, we conclude that the litigation
privilege must yield to it. (Barela, supra, 30 Cal.3d at p. 251; Banuelos, supra,
219 Cal.App.4th at p. 331; cf. Komarova v. National Credit Acceptance, Inc. (2009)
175 Cal.App.4th 324, 340 [“The Legislature presumably would not have included”
protections against specific kinds of litigation abuse by debt collectors under the Robbins-
Rosenthal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act “if it intended for the privilege to apply. . . .
[T]he Act is ‘a remedial statute [that] should be interpreted broadly in order to effectuate its
purpose’ ”].)
4. Feldman and Wallace
Sagi insists that section 47, subdivision (b) applies to Winslett’s eighth and fifteenth
causes of action, citing two cases, both from this District, one from Division Two,
Feldman v. 1100 Park Lane Associates (2008) 160 Cal.App.4th 1467 (Feldman), and one
from Division Five, Wallace v. McCubbin (2011) 196 Cal.App.4th 1169 (Wallace),
disapproved of on other grounds in Baral v. Schnitt (2016) 1 Cal.5th 376, 396, footnote 11.
Feldman was a case involving a luxury apartment in a building known as the Park Lane, at
1100 Sacramento Street in San Francisco. (Feldman, at p. 1473.) The Feldmans, a couple
moving to the west coast from New York, attempted to sublet an apartment in the Park Lane
and were told by Seigel, an attorney for the landlord, that their sublease application was
conditionally approved, but they moved in only to discover that the landlord had not in fact
approved the sublease and wanted substantially increased rent as the price of his assent. (Id.
at pp. 1473-1474.) After what they claimed were harassing visits from a man named