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BERKELEY — Chang-Qin Wu didn’t miss his second court date. He’d traveled all the way from Shanghai to guarantee it. By 9:30 a.m. Oct. 19, he was seated in the Berkeley Courthouse opposite his accuser and former landlady to find out whether the trans-Pacific flight would be worth it. He hastily tugged his blazer over his shoulders and sat up straight as Alameda County Superior Court Judge Marshall Whitley entered the small claims court.

Across the aisle, 78-year-old Esther Yang of El Sobrante shuffled to her seat, propped her feet on her metal walker’s support bars and with a trembling thumb sifted through the photographs and faded receipts she’d brought along as proof of her claim. Wu, she said, had never paid her the $1,000 rent for November 2006 and left apartment No. 3 in her building at 1117 Brighton Street in Albany filled with trash and an overflowing sink. It cost her $6,325 to clean it up.

BERKELEY — Chang-Qin Wu didn’t miss his second court date. He’d traveled all the way from Shanghai to guarantee it. By 9:30 a.m. Oct. 19, he was seated in the Berkeley Courthouse opposite his accuser and former landlady to find out whether the trans-Pacific flight would be worth it. He hastily tugged his blazer over his shoulders and sat up straight as Alameda County Superior Court Judge Marshall Whitley entered the small claims court.

Across the aisle, 78-year-old Esther Yang of El Sobrante shuffled to her seat, propped her feet on her metal walker’s support bars and with a trembling thumb sifted through the photographs and faded receipts she’d brought along as proof of her claim. Wu, she said, had never paid her the $1,000 rent for November 2006 and left apartment No. 3 in her building at 1117 Brighton Street in Albany filled with trash and an overflowing sink. It cost her $6,325 to clean it up.

Yang was expecting to collect at least $5,200 of that because a different judge had awarded it to her on July 6 after Wu didn’t show up to defend himself at the first small claims trial. Wu left the United States five months before, 10 days after Yang filed her suit and seven days after he sent her a new check to cover the disputed rent. He said he mailed it to the San Diego address listed on his rental agreement, same as he always had, and thought that would be the end of it.

“I thought the condition was almost the same as when we got there,” Wu said, recalling his last moments in the apartment before returning to Shanghai, where he teaches physics at Fudan University.

The return ticket turned out to be worth the money for Wu. This time he won. Wu, Whitley ruled, owed Yang no more than the $1,000 security deposit he’d given her in February 2006, when he and his wife, Yue-Ping Zheng, agreed to rent the apartment while Wu conducted physics research at the University of California Berkeley as a visiting scholar.

Beyond that, Yang’s investment in a fresh coat of paint, patched holes, water damage repair, new window shades and detailed scrubbing weren’t his responsibility.

The ruling came as a relief to Wu, who was alarmed to receive an email from UC Berkeley student Jie Wu on July 7, telling him that they both were ordered to pay Yang. Wu then asked the court to reconsider its decision. In a written statement filed Aug. 31, Wu said he had paid Yang her rent, and because the apartment was very old and in need of repair, he shouldn’t be held responsible for what was essentially maintenance.

Jie was a former student at Fudan who had helped Wu get the apartment in 2006, but otherwise had nothing to do with the dispute. He never lived on Brighton Street, and Wu was baffled as to why Jie was listed on Yang’s original claim. According to Yang, Jie was a co-signer on Wu’s lease.

Yang, who has owned property since 1977 from Berkeley to Hayward to Alameda, doesn’t hesitate to turn to the courts to protect her rights as a landlady. But the Brighton Street complex, which she bought in 1982, has been a particular source of trouble. Since 2003, she’s filed six cases against her tenants there, citing repeated unpaid rent, overflowing trash and property damage.

The Wus, Yang said, left the apartment in such disarray that she couldn’t show the place for an entire month.

“They only lived there one year,” she said. “I don’t know how they got it so dirty.”

Yang said Whitley unfairly favored Wu, whose appeal of the July 6 court ruling was filed after the 30-day deadline. Small claims court rules prevent her as plaintiff from appealing the ruling.

This was disappointing for Yang, who said she is often frustrated by her experience in court. Early in her case against Wu, she submitted a hand-written letter requesting that Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Taber be removed after telling Yang in April “that she could not understand my Chinese accent.”

“I am old, and I cannot always explain myself,” said Yang, who continues to represent herself in court.

“A lawyer would charge me $100, $200, $300 an hour,” she added. “I’d rather do it myself.”