Opt up awards tenants $52 million for ‘horrendous’ stipulations

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Tenants who sued over “horrendous” living stipulations at a Kansas City low-profits housing pattern were awarded $52 million in damages.

Jackson County Opt up Joel Fehestock on Tuesday existing in desire of the tenants, who sued KM-T.E.H. Realty 8 and Michael Fein final year for ignoring complaints about roach and rat infestations, uncooked sewage, a scarcity of air-con and warmth, and condo ceilings that had collapsed at the 169-unit complex, KCUR reported.

“The stipulations these households had been compelled to are living in had been appropriate horrendous, acknowledged Gregory Leyh, the tenants’ lawyer. “The court docket inclined the phrase ‘unhealthy and reprehensible,’ which I mediate is really an shiny phrase.”

Officers of KM-T.E.H. Management, the firm’s management arm in Reading, Pennsylvania, did now not acknowledge to a build a question to for comment.

T.E.H. and Fein neglected court docket orders all throughout the litigation and did now not seem in court docket. Fahnestock levied contempt fines of $1,000 a day in opposition to them in April and extra fines of $7,500-a-day in June. Those are in addition to the damage awards.

A warrant became issued for Fein’s arrest after he became indicted by a federal large jury in St. Louis in August over allegedly submitting false applications to form $28 million in financial institution loans. He is believed to be in a single more country, possibly in Israel, the build KM-T.E.H. became based in 2006.

The class action lawsuit, which became filed in October, became introduced on behalf of all tenants who rented devices at Ruskin Enlighten Apartments since July 2015.

The firm, through its LLCs, owns at least two dozen condo complexes in the Kansas City remark, one more two dozen in St. Louis and properties in Tulsa, Indianapolis and Reading, Pennsylvania.

One trial show in the Ruskin Enlighten case integrated 591 pages of complaints to the Missouri attorney general’s office. Fahnestock chanced on that T.E.H 8 and Fein’s misconduct “became fragment of a broader sample of conduct, and became clearly now not an isolated incident.”