Articles

Tenants, attorneys accuse Cleveland property owners of cruel treatment

Wednesday, July 13, 2011 By Mark Gillispie, The Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio — By some accounts, brothers Graig and Derek Brown are exceptionally bad landlords.

Court documents and interviews portray the brothers as vindictive and mean-spirited with a track record of illegally shutting off utilities and locking out tenants for being a few days late with the rent or for complaining about conditions in their rental units.

Cleveland Housing Court Judge Raymond Pianka made his feelings clear when he recently awarded $482,000 in compensatory and punitive damages to Cindy Smith, a former tenant of the Browns.

“The court has never, in its 31-year history, heard proof in so many cases of a landlord or landlords engaging in such repeated, ongoing, deliberate, cruel, harmful and illegal conduct,” Pianka wrote. Read More>>

Cleveland road-rage case offers questions of intent; prosecutor to decide whether charges to be filed

Friday, March 30, 2012, by John Caniglia, The Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio — A 20-year-old Cleveland man remains hospitalized after a road-rage feud in the Steelyard Commons parking lot March 15.

But Nathan Harrison, who was listed in good condition at MetroHealth Medical Center on Friday, is at the center of a feud that started on the Jennings Freeway, then continued in a department store and finally into a parking lot, where Harrison was hit by a van. Read More>>