Krueger v. Cuomo, 96-2906

• Decision Date: 03 June 1997
• Docket Number: No. 96-2906,96-2906
• Citation: 115 F.3d 487
• Parties: Lyle KRUEGER, Petitioner, v. Andrew M. CUOMO, Secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 487

115 F.3d 487

Lyle KRUEGER, Petitioner, v. Andrew M. CUOMO, Secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, Respondent.

No. 96-2906.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued March 31, 1997.

Decided June 3, 1997.

Gerald A. Goldman, Arthur R. Ehrlich, Jonathan C. Goldman (argued), Chicago, IL, for Petitioner.

Jessica Dunsay Silver, Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Appellate Section, Washington, DC, Elizabeth Crowder, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Chicago, IL, Nelson Diaz, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Washington, DC, Michelle M. Aronowitz (argued), United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for Respondent.

Before FLAUM, KANNE, and ROVNER, Circuit Judges.

FLAUM, Circuit Judge.

Lyle Krueger petitions for review of a decision and order of the Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development ("HUD") concluding that Krueger violated the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3601 et seq., by sexually harassing one of his tenants. We affirm.

I.

In April 1992, Debbie Maze was living in Kenosha, Wisconsin with her two children, ages four and three, in her sister's two-bedroom apartment, also home to the sister's boyfriend and four children. Maze had been searching for an apartment for three months, and her section 8 housing voucher was due to expire in late May. So when she saw a "for rent" sign on an apartment owned by Lyle Krueger, she inquired within and found Krueger, who gave her a rental application and suggested they meet the next morning for breakfast.

At the breakfast meeting, it became apparent that Maze could not afford the three-bedroom, $547-a-month apartment, for her housing voucher provided only $395 for a two-bedroom apartment, to which she was expected to add a personal contribution of $52 per month. Although Krueger initially refused to rent the apartment to Maze, he soon changed his mind. He located Maze through her sister, a former tenant, and arranged for another breakfast meeting. At this second meeting, Krueger told Maze that she could pay money on the side or "fool around or something" to make up the $100 shortfall. She declined this payment scheme, but Krueger nevertheless agreed to rent her the apartment. Maze did not own a car, and Krueger gave her a ride home from their meeting. In his car, Krueger rubbed Maze's thigh and predicted, "we're going to be close." Maze asked Krueger not to touch her.

On May 11, Krueger and Maze went to the Kenosha Housing Authority to sign a rental agreement. In the elevator on the way to the office, Krueger touched Maze, rubbed her, and tried to kiss her. She told him to stop, a request he greeted with laughter. After the two had signed the lease, an undaunted Krueger once again prophesied that he and Maze "were going to be real close." Maze was so disturbed by Krueger's behavior that, later the same day, she returned alone to the Housing Authority. There, she reported Krueger's advances to a Housing Authority official, Paula Lattergrass, who urged her not to take the apartment. Maze felt that she had few alternatives other than to move into the apartment, but she did, at the suggestion of Lattergrass, file complaints against Krueger with the Urban League and HUD.

Krueger's unwelcome advances continued after Maze moved into the apartment on May 13. He made a habit (three to four times a week, Maze recalled) of arriving unannounced; he would knock on the first-floor doorway, enter before Maze could respond, and climb the internal staircase to her apartment. Once inside, he would grab and touch Maze, doing so on at least one occasion in front of her children. He suggested that she send the children to her mother's so that she and Krueger could go away together. On another occasion, he repeated his hope that they would be "real close" and asked if they were "going to do good in bed." When Maze demurred, he told Maze that he was losing money because of her and reminded her that he could have rented the apartment to someone else. Krueger also asked Maze out for drinks. Maze, who is black, told Krueger, who is white, that she did not date white men. Four or five times, she observed him parked outside her home watching her apartment. Maze began to seek ways to minimize contact with Krueger. In order to do so, she brought her rent checks to Lattergrass, who forwarded them to Krueger.

Under these circumstances, it would be inapt to speak of a deterioration in the relationship between Krueger and Maze; but from Krueger's perspective at least, matters did take a turn for the worse after he learned that Maze had filed harassment charges against him. In a series of letters written during the summer of 1992, Krueger expressed his dissatisfaction with Maze as a tenant. These letters explicitly linked the perceived decline in their relations to Maze's filing of harassment charges against Krueger ("Before you moved in you were very friendly ..., you were a pleasure to be with and then you filed sexual harassment charges."), informed Maze that Krueger would be willing to break the year-long lease, and repeatedly suggested that Maze "think about moving." The letters also referred to a ten-dollar fee, imposed as a result of the Housing Authority's purported delay in forwarding Maze's rent check, and to the cost of repairs made to the apartment, both of which Krueger intended to deduct from Maze's rent payments. In October, the letters became more official in tone. On October 20, Krueger informed Maze that, because lead had been detected in her children's blood, she would have to vacate the apartment and remove all of her belongings, including furniture, in order for him to take "corrective action." (In fact, Krueger only painted over the lead-based paint; Maze and her children were able to spend daytime hours at her mother's for the two or three days required to complete the painting.) The most recent letter in the record, dated October 22, 1992, came from Krueger's lawyer, who instructed Maze that she must either pay "unpaid rent" or vacate her apartment within five days.

As Krueger indicated in his letters, the "unpaid rent" represented the cost of repairs that he had deducted from Maze's rent payments, as well as the ten-dollar late fee. The repairs in question were the unclogging of Maze's toilet and sink and the replacement of her apartment door, which she had forced open after one of her children locked himself inside the apartment. Prior to Krueger's attempt to evict Maze, the landlord and tenant had met at the Housing Authority in an attempt to resolve the payment dispute, and Lattergrass had presented a compromise solution, under which Maze would pay for a portion of the repairs. (Based on her inspection of the apartment, Lattergrass believed that Maze was only partly responsible for the plumbing difficulties and that the broken door had needed only a new lock, not complete replacement.) Nevertheless, Krueger refused to accept any money from Maze.

Krueger continued to sexually harass Maze after she became pregnant in October 1992. In February 1993, Maze moved out of her apartment and into her mother's home, a two-bedroom unit shared by Maze's stepfather and her brother. She did not find another apartment until May 1993.

Maze's complaint against Krueger came before an administrative law judge ("ALJ") in December 1995. After hearing testimony from Krueger, Maze, her sister Barbara Maze, Lattergrass, and a HUD investigator, the ALJ ruled in favor of Maze. In his decision and order, dated June 7, 1996, the ALJ noted that, in contrast to Debbie Maze's "straightforward, consistent, and credible" testimony, which was corroborated by Lattergrass and Barbara Maze, Krueger's testimony was "riddled with inconsistencies" and, in places, "simply ... not believable." ¹ Significantly, the ALJ found that Krueger's conduct had caused Maze to move out of her apartment. Krueger "made Maze's tenancy untenable," in the ALJ's view; "Eventually the tenancy became so miserable that she felt compelled to move out." The ALJ also rejected Krueger's proffered explanations for his attempts to evict Maze (her hostility toward him, her failure to pay rent) and found that Krueger's actions were a direct response to her refusal to submit to his demands and to her filing of harassment charges. Because Maze's rejection of Krueger's advances resulted in an adverse consequence (i.e., being forced out of her apartment), the...