Three Women Awarded $4+ Million Court Judgment In Fair Housing Lawsuit Accusing Two Lowlife Landlords Of Targeting Female Tenants For Abuse, Intimidation

In Cleveland, Ohio, The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports:

• After Brianna Bowers' son tested positive for lead poisoning in 2013, public health officials told her landlord, Derek Brown, that her apartment had to be inspected for the toxin.
  
  Brown called with a message for the 21-year-old mother.
  
  "He said he was going to kick my door in and 'f' me up if I didn't get out of the house," Bowers said.
  
  Bowers's son was a toddler. This was her first apartment. She was uneasy, already, about mold and a flickering light in the bathroom ceiling.
  
  She didn't know that it was unusual for a tenant to lack a written lease. Or for a landlord to demand that rent be paid only in cash.
  
  Nor did she know that Brown, 48, and his brother Graig, 44, were among Cleveland's most notorious landlords.
  
  The two were accused dozens of times over the past decade of mistreating tenants: taking their deposits, locking them out of their homes, threatening them, swearing at them, or taking everything from clothes to family keepsakes from tenants who were late on rent, or asked for repairs.
  
  The tenants making those accusations in civil and criminals complaints were almost all women.
  
  Over the years, the Brown brothers and companies associated with them were hit with civil judgments totaling more than $1.2 million, and contempt of court fines of $1.4 million. Yet, they have stayed in business, often transferring assets among multiple companies.
  
  Last year, a group of women filed a lawsuit accusing the brothers and their companies of violating federal fair housing laws by targeting female tenants, including Bowers, for abuse and intimidation. U.S. District Court Judge Donald C. Nugent awarded them a civil judgment of $4 million in December.
  
  Diane Citrino, an attorney with Giffen & Kaminski who represented the tenants with the help of Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, said the massive judgment means that the Brown brothers can no longer ignore the courts.
  
  "This makes it clear it's not a cost of doing business," she said.

For more, see Judge orders notorious Cleveland landlords to pay $4 million to female tenants.

For the court ruling, see Gray v. Brown, 1:14-cv-00225-LW (N.D. Ohio December 7, 2015).