$2.7 million award upheld in opposition to San Francisco landlord

SAN FRANCISCO – A San Francisco landlord who was once described as an “unscrupulous predator” who allegedly tried to evict tenants from a rented apartment pays them $ 2.7 million, a state appeals court ruled.

The court upheld the award last month in a 2015 lawsuit filed by Dale Duncan and Marta Munoz Mendoza, who lived in the building with their daughter.

The lawsuit alleged that a company controlled by Anne Kihagi harassed her for more than a year to force her out of her apartment in order to attract higher-paying tenants.

They were eventually forced to vacate the building when the landlord filed an “owner eviction,” which allows eviction if an owner will be living in the building. Kihagi claimed that a family member who also had an interest in the homeowners company was moving in, which the family lawyer said never happened.

The family moved into a two-bedroom house with a rent that was almost three times what they paid for the apartment, according to their lawsuit.

In 2017, a jury awarded them more than $ 3.5 million, which reduced a pre-trial court to $ 2.7 million.

In its 3-0 ruling confirming this award, the First District Court of Appeals said landlords “ignored or delayed responses to maintenance and servicing issues, were uncommunicative and uncooperative, and became increasingly hostile.”

The decision included removing recycling bins, refusing to repair a leaky water heater, blocking access to a laundry room, and turning off electricity.

Messages requesting comments from a lawyer representing Kihagi were not immediately returned.

It is the latest of many legal disputes between Kihagi, who once owned nearly a dozen apartment buildings in San Francisco.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera once described Kihagi as “a ruthless predator who targets tenants in rent-controlled homes for harassment and eviction, and weed out seniors and people with disabilities for particularly despicable abuse.”

In 2017, Kihagi was fined $ 5.5 million in a city attorney’s lawsuit.

A judge said Kihagi and her co-defendants exhibited “an ongoing pattern of bad faith harassment, retaliation and fraud” directed against tenants.

The properties were ordered by a court and some of them were sold.