Jury awards man $715,000 in rental bias case

FULTON, Mo. -- A black man who claimed he was treated poorly by managers of a rental complex where he formerly leased a duplex has won a $715,000 verdict in a racial discrimination case.

Elmo Green, now of Jefferson City, was charged double the normal security deposit and given a duplex that was isolated from other occupied units when he moved into the Sabre Village complex in September 1999, his attorney told a Callaway County Circuit Court jury last week.

In the following months, according to the lawsuit Green filed two years later, managers made improvements to other units but not to his and called police one day when his brother entered Green's duplex while he was out.

Green was the only black tenant at the Fulton complex when he moved in, according to his attorneys.

"What they did to me was wrong," Green, 34, said after the trial concluded. "The jury sent a message that you can't treat people like that and get away with it."

Defense attorney David A. Oliver, of Columbia, declined to comment on the verdict but said he planned to file a post-trial motion "very soon."

The jury decided unanimously in Green's favor on his allegations that Sabre Village LLC committed forcible entry and wrongful detainer, trespassing and racial discrimination in housing practices, according to his attorneys. Separately, the jury found 11-1 against Columbia-based Forrest Properties Management on a count of racial discrimination.

Green's attorney, Daniel Hunt, said Sabre Village's management sodded the yards of all units -- including unoccupied ones -- except his and kept him waiting nine months for an air conditioner and screen doors after installing them elsewhere in the complex.

In May 2000, Green, a single father, came home to find management and police in and around his duplex. Hunt said managers told him they called police because they saw a person in the complex they didn't recognize. The man was Green's brother, who was baby-sitting Green's 5-year-old son.

Shortly after that, management punished Green by removing his air conditioning and screen doors, Hunt said. A former employee testified that managers told him the intent was to let Green "sweat in that box."