Publication Date: Wednesday Feb 11, 1998

HOUSING: Discrimination suit settled

In what may be the largest single housing discrimination settlement in the nation for Asian Americans, a Menlo Park landlord was ordered to pay $300,000 this week to five women who claim she shouted racial slurs at them when they went to visit her rental property.

The five women--four of whom were Stanford undergraduates when the incident occurred in May 1996--claim the defendant, Janette Hybl told them she had "good, white American applicants," when they went to the property on 8th Avenue on the border of Menlo Park and North Fair Oaks, according to their attorney, Scott Chang.

Hybl then chased them out to their car shouting "go back to your own country" and "you're ruining this country," a press release from Midpeninsula Citizens for Fair Housing said on Monday.

All of the women are Asian American.

"Those were actual statements that were made by the defendant and she did not deny them," Chang said of the allegations. After paying $75,000 in attorney's fees, each of his clients will receive $45,000 of the $300,000 settlement for emotional distress.

Although the Stanford students have graduated, four of the women still live in the Stanford/Palo Alto area and one is a graduate student at the University of California in Berkeley, Chang said.

Chang, who filed a federal lawsuit against Hybl in August 1996 on behalf of the women, said Hybl was intoxicated at the time. U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken issued the order which stated that Hybl was liable for violating state housing laws and the civil hate crime statute.1 n