US landlord slapped with USD 3.5 mn fine for wrongful eviction

A notorious landlord in San Francisco has been slapped with a USD 3.5 million fine by a jury which found her guilty of ousting a family from its home of 21 years to rent the unit at a higher price.
The jury this month found Anne Kihagi guilty of violating the law when she evicted tenants - Dale Duncan, his wife Marta Mendoza and their then-6-year-old daughter - from their home on Hill Street, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The judgement is the largest in a single-unit landlord- tenant case not involving personal injury claims in the nation, the paper quoted attorneys for the family as saying.

According to the family, Kihagi evicted them after saying that her sister Christina Mwangi would be occupying the unit.
In San Francisco, landlords can legally evict tenants if they or a family member plans to move in.
But the family sued last year, saying the owner move-in was a sham, and that Kihagi instead intended to rent the unit out at a market-rate price. At the time, the family was paying about USD 1,300 per month for its rent-controlled unit.

"The jury determined that (Mwangi) never moved in and never intended to move in," Steven McDonald, an attorney for the family, said yesterday.

Shortly after Kihagi bought the five-unit Hill Street building in 2014, she took a number of bewildering actions aimed at making life difficult for all of her rent-controlled tenants, the paper quoted McDonald as saying.
"At one point, all of a sudden, she reduced garbage services by half without telling tenants. She would shut off electricity in common areas, and she would retaliate if (tenants) complained," he said.
Mendoza said she and her family are relieved to be through the ordeal, but she misses the home she was forced out of.
A San Francisco Superior Court jury awarded the family USD 1.17 million in damages this month after a four-and-half- week trial, but Superior Court Judge Andrew Y S Cheng tripled that amount last week, the paper said.

Under San Francisco law, judges can triple the amount of damages awarded to victims whose rights have been violated under the citys rent ordinance.
Richard Diestal, an attorney for Kihagi, did not respond to requests for comment.