Even though Nashua district court stands fewer than 150 yards from the Temple Street Hotel, evicting tenants from the city’s largest rooming house almost never starts at the Nashua court.

Instead, ownership of the building – 23-25 Temple Street Realty LLC – routinely chooses to file eviction and demand-for-rent cases in Portsmouth district court, some 55 miles away.

The practice, if somewhat bewildering, is perfectly legal: Since the LLC has offices in Portsmouth, its principals can choose to file cases in either Nashua or Portsmouth district court. They have opted – in almost every instance examined by The Telegraph – to bring their claims in a court that is considerably less convenient for tenants living in Nashua, most of whom already face financial and transportation obstacles.

While tenants have the right to request a change of venue through the court and move a Portsmouth case to Nashua, housing advocates say a strong majority of tenants aren’t aware of such finer points of state law and rarely seek to have their case moved.

"Most residents are in the dark about things like this – they don’t understand the law," said Steve McGilvary, a housing paralegal with the Legal Advice & Referral Center in Concord. While he didn’t directly accuse 23-25 Temple Street Realty LLC of deliberately using the Portsmouth court to create a hardship for the tenants they take action against, McGilvary said the practice isn’t uncommon in the state among landlords of numerous or large-scale rental properties.

"We see it a lot with low-income clients who don’t have transportation," he said of tenants who seek assistance from the legal center. "It’s lawful for (landlords) to do that, but it’s also dirty pool to do that."

The Telegraph reviewed the filings, typically called a "landlord tenant writ," in the days and weeks following a public meeting hosted by the city’s Substandard Living Conditions Special Committee, a newly-formed panel given the task of investigating unsafe and unhealthy conditions at large residential facilities that accept city housing vouchers. That includes places like the Temple Street Hotel and the Country Barn Motel and Campground on Broad Street.

The review found that since 2010, a total of 84 cases involving 23-25 Temple Street Realty LLC have been filed in Portsmouth and Nashua district courts. The landlord filed a writ against tenants in 77 of those cases, while the firm was sued in the remaining seven cases.

All 77 actions were filed in Portsmouth. Of those, only 14 were transferred to the Nashua court after tenants filied a "change of venue" request that the judge granted. Only in one case did the company object to the venue change, but the judge ended up granting it.

The documents show that the tenants who knew the law well enough to ask for the venue change to Nashua fared slightly better in the end. Of those 14 cases that were heard just down the street from the Temple Street boarding house, six resulted in a "default judgement" in favor of the company, meaning that the tenant either abandoned the case or was unable to pursue it, usually due to logistical issues or lack of resources.

But default judgements against Nashua residents were far more common in the Portsmouth court, supporting McGilvary’s contention that large-scale landlords take advantage of the system to stack the odds against tenants by filing suit in courts an hour or more away from where the defendants live.

Court documents show that 23-25 Temple St. LLC won default judgements in 56 of the 77 cases that were heard in Portsmouth. Five others were withdrawn, three were dismissed, three are ongoing and an agreement was reached in one case.

In Nashua, besides the six default judgements, two were dismissed and three ended with an agreement between the parties. The dispostions of three other cases are unknown.

On Nov. 30, a number of Temple Street Hotel tenants described leaking pipes, broken bathroom fixtures, bedbugs, accumulations of human waste and other problems at the committee’s second public meeting, which took place at the Nashua Soup Kitchen and Shelter.

Others praised the management and custodians for doing all they can to keep the building up to par, and suggested unruly guests were responsible for a lot of the problems.

But Ward 9 alderman Ken Siegel, who chairs the committee, said it appears that ownership relies on bullying and intimidation to run the hotel, and has declined, for the most part, to talk or meet with the committee, which also includes Mayor-elect Jim Donchess and Ward 1 alderman Sean McGuiness.

Numerous attempts to reach the principals of 23-25 Temple Street Realty LLC, described in documents as a partnership of Jeffrey Noury, Robert Jodoin and Paul Pleatsikas, have been unsuccessful. City property records for 23 Temple St. list the LLC as the owner, with a post office box in Auburn listed as its address.

The secretary of state’s business registry lists the LLC’s registered agent as Bedford attorney John L. Allen. Messages left at Allen’s office weren’t returned. The registry lists the LLC’s address as 202 Summer St., Noury’s Portsmouth office. It states that the LLC was created in January 1998 and is in "good standing."

The Temple Street building’s manager, Ricky Caron, known as "Coach" to tenants, returned a message Wednesday saying Noury was scheduled to be at the rooming house Thursday morning. An attempt to locate Noury was unsuccessful; the main door is locked and there are no "buzzer panels" to contact the office.

A man and a woman exiting the building said they "don’t know who that is" when asked if Noury was inside. Noury didn’t respond to a note left in the door Thursday morning asking him to call The Telegraph.

Noury is also listed as the owner or a part-owner of dozens of southern and coastal New Hampshire properties, including 202 Summer St., the Portsmouth address listed on court documents filed in the Portsmouth court.

He is also a principal of a firm called Daudier Investments LLC, the owner of the Cadillac Motel in Manchester, a large rooming house similar in size to the Temple Street Hotel.

Siegel, meanwhile, said recently that Temple Street tenants have told him the owners frequently file the eviction or demand-for-rent cases in Portsmouth court because they know it’s difficult or impossible for the majority of tenants to travel there.

"That’s what I’ve been told," Siegel said. "I understand why landlords need to be able to evict a tenant, but it seems to me some of (the evictions) may be a little over the line" and often are filed to retaliate against a tenant.

Siegel said the owners of the building are welcome to tell their story to the committee, but have not done so. "We’d like for them to tell their side of the story," he said. "That’s not exactly what I’d adopt as a strategy to deal with city government."

Instead, Pleatsikas – one of the building’s owners – threatened to have Siegel arrested for "illegally gaining entry" into 23 Temple St. on Nov. 24, when tenant Kathy Tucker asked Siegel and Ward 4 alderman-elect Tom Lopez to meet with her over her pending eviction. Pleatsikas warned Siegel in writing that nobody "beyond the resident and management" is allowed to discuss rental issues with tenants.

Tucker, Siegel said at the time, received an eviction notice the day after she spoke at the Substandard Living Conditions committee’s first meeting on Nov. 18.

That Tucker was current on her rent and had the paperwork to prove it gave credence to tenants’ claims that the owners and managers regularly intimidated and retaliated against many of them, Siegel said.

McGilvary, the paralegal, said many tenants eventually give up trying to fight eviction, no matter how strong a case they may have. "The tenant gets a knock on the door, gets a summons and have no idea what to do next," he said. "Most have no way of getting to Portsmouth, and even if they had transportation, they don’t know what steps they need to take."

Dean Shalhoup can be reached at 594-6443, dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com or @Telegraph_DeanS.