Yusar Said v. Old Home Management, File No. A21-1676 (Minn. Ct. App. Dec. 19, 2022) (nonprecedential) involved some unusual facts and a construction of the punitive-damages clause of Minn. Stat. §504B.271 that I think is incorrect.
In mid June 2019, Ms. Said packed her smaller belongings in boxes and put them beside her furniture in anticipation of moving out at the end of her lease on June 30. On June 25 she left her Minneapolis apartment for an overnight visit with her daughter in Burnsville. When she came back the next day, the apartment was empty and the walls repainted. She soon learned that her landlord’s managers had somehow decided that she had abandoned her home & personal property and that they had thrown everything away. Unbeknownst to them, one of her dressers contained about $46,000 worth of gold jewelry.
She had several meetings with management and orally discussed what they did but she never made a written demand for return of her personal property. She sued for money and eventually the district court awarded her damages of $58,668 for the loss of her furnishings and jewelry plus another $58,668 as punitive damages under Minn. Stat. § 504B.271, subd. 2. The issue at the Court of Appeals was whether awarding the punitive-damages award was allowed without a written demand for return of personal property. The Court of Appeals ruled that such a demand was not needed; a demand for money in the form of a lawsuit for money was enough.
In this essay (available in PDF and Word), I discuss why I think this ruling was wrong because the language of the statute says that punitive damages require a written demand for return of the personal property.
That said, good policy says punitive damages should be available anytime the landlord disposes of property before the end of the required 28-day hold period, refuses to return property upon demand, or otherwise violates the statute. I discuss this and several other gaps and glitches in the statute that should be fixed.
The Word version of the essay has links to cited materials. Also available are these five appendices:
Appendix 1 reviews some suspicions I have about the jewelry, and makes some comments about how Old Home seems to have repeatedly made things worse for itself via penny pinching.
Appendix 2 gathers all versions this statute from its original version of Minn. Stat. § 504.24 (1975) through Minn. Stat. § 504B.271 (2022) plus associated session laws.
Appendix 3 is a detailed legislative history of the session law behind Minn. Stat. § 504.24 (1975), 1975 Minn. Laws ch. 410, s. 1.
Appendix 4 is a detailed legislative history of the 2010 amendments to Minn. Stat. § 504B.271 (2008).
Appendix 5 is a collection of conciliation- and district-court pleadings plus the appellate briefs in this case. This is a Word file consisting of links to PDF images of the collected pleadings.
Birnberg Minnesota Legislative Newsletter 