Jill Monteith said that the night before she arrived at the Ada County Courthouse for an Oct. 3 eviction hearing, she planned on quick legal proceedings to get back her building in Boise’s North End from a tenant who had fallen months behind on rent.
The tenant, Danielle Riddle, had rebuffed offers to let her out of her lease on the Hyde Park structure housing the restaurant Apericena — without consequences, Monteith said.
Instead, Monteith said she learned by email that Riddle — who also uses the name Danielle Christine professionally — had filed her own lawsuit as a counter to the eviction proceedings. In that suit, filed on Oct. 2, Riddle accused Monteith of falsifying the lease, stalking Riddle’s partner, failing to provide important repairs to the building and attempting to defame Riddle, among other allegations, according to Ada County court documents.
“I was completely blindsided by that,” Monteith told the Idaho Statesman in a phone interview.
The legal back-and-forth comes at a time of turmoil for Riddle’s businesses. Apericena hasn’t been open to customers for weeks, Monteith said, and has faced accusations from several former employees about late or missing wages. Its sister restaurant, Bistro d’Helene, faced eviction proceedings in July before reaching an agreement to close and vacate its space on Fort Street by the end of September, the Statesman previously reported .