The stakes are high for both sides, and distrust between many landlords and the borough runs deep.
West Chester, the county seat, is on the cusp of what local officials call a downtown renaissance and has increasingly popular residential neighborhoods.
So, borough officials have been under pressure to rein in college student behavior and preserve property values by keeping what they deem to be nuisances at a minimum.
"The problems were not new, it's just that a group decided to become aggressive and act on it," said H. Paul Fitzpatrick, the Borough Council president. "The time had come."
He said the borough has not backed down in the face of the suits because regulating land use is the borough's responsibility.
Landlords, however, have much at stake, too: rental fees for about 4,100 apartments. If they collect $700 per month from those units, their revenues would amount to almost $35 million a year, nearly three times the borough's annual budget.
"We're trying to run a business, and trying to defend our businesses," said Robert J. Kappe, one of West Chester's many landlords.
Highly partisan politics - an entirely Democratic Borough Council dug in against a group of landlords who regularly contribute to local Republicans - exacerbates the conflict.
"It just seems like the Democrats have been hell-bent over the last five years on attacking rental property owners and we don't know why," Kappe said.
Kappe, along with Stanford Zukin, John P. O'Connell, and Grant Nelson, own about 230 apartments in town, more than 5 percent of West Chester's total.
The West Chester Apartment Housing Association's lawsuits have so far cost the borough $130,000 in legal fees. The three landlords who sued over the rental inspection program - Kappe, O'Connell and Nelson - are entitled to $12,000, if the decision stands.
