Daniel Hill, Respondent,

This opinion will be unpublished and
may not be cited except as provided by
Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2018).

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A19-2058

Daniel Hill,
Respondent,

vs.

Dallas Jason Primeaux, et al.,
Appellants.

Filed September 8, 2020
Reversed
Segal, Chief Judge

St. Louis County District Court
File No. 69DU-CV-19-2984

Daniel Hill, Proctor, Minnesota (pro se respondent)

Jude Schmit, Legal Aid of Northeastern Minnesota, Duluth, Minnesota (for appellants)

Considered and decided by Ross, Pr esiding Judge; Segal, Chief Judge; and
Bratvold, Judge.
U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
SEGAL, Chief Judge
In this eviction appeal, appellants argue that the record does not support the district
court’s determination that respondent-landlord rebutted the defense of retaliatory eviction

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under Minn. Stat. § 504B.285, subd. 2 (2018). 1 Because the record does not support that
the termination of appellants’ tenancy wa s wholly unrelated to and unmotivated by
appellants’ protected activity, we reverse.
FACTS
In 2016, appellants Dallas Jason Primeaux and Maria Cruz Herrara (tenants) signed
a one-year lease for the lower unit of a duplex owned by respondent Daniel Hill. After the
expiration of the one-year term, the lease became month-to-month and remained so through
the remainder of their tenancy. In July 2019, the tenants no tified Hill about a bug
infestation in the apartment and asked him to remedy it. Hill testified that he did not receive
the request until a couple of months later when , on September 15, he sent an email to the
tenants stating, “I really like you guys but this threat[en]ing me with legal and housing stuff
instead of working with me to fix problem[s] makes it hard. [W]ork with me in a nice way
and I will do the same and we can probably fix the problem.”
In addition to notifying H ill, the tenants filed a comp laint with the Housing and
Redevelopment Authority (HRA) of Duluth re questing a special inspection of their unit
because they believed there was a bedbug in festation. The inspection confirmed the
tenants’ suspicions of bedb ugs, and the HRA informed th e tenants and Hill of this
conclusion in a letter received by Hill on September 16. The letter notified Hill that the

1 The tenants also argue that the determination of the district court is against public policy
because it “departs fr om the legislative intent behind the retaliation defense” and it
“endangers the retaliation defense through a chilling effect.” Because we are reversing on
other grounds, we need not reach this argument.

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HRA’s housing assistance payments would be abated unless there was a clearance of the
infestation.
On the same day that Hill received the letter from the HRA, September 16, 2019,
Hill provided the tenants with a notice to quit telling them to “please be out along with all
of your possessions no later than October 31, 2019.” 2 In the notice, H ill told the tenants
“we have decided to fix up the house . . . and then put it up for sale.” The tenants received
the notice the next day, but they did not vacate the premises as requested. On October 31,
the tenants emailed Hill asking when they should pay rent, and Hill responded that he was
selling the house and would not accept the rent payment. He told them that if they were
not out with all of their possessions, he would have them evicted.3
On November 4, 2019, Hill filed an eviction action against the tenants based on their
failure to vacate the property after written noti ce was given. At the eviction hearing, the
tenants did not dispute that they held over. They instead presented a retaliation defense
under Minn. Stat. § 504B.285, subd. 2 based on their contention that the notice was in
retaliation for their filing of a complaint with the HRA about the infestation. Hill admitted
at the hearing that he received reports fro m the tenants of “spiders, ants, bumblebees,
fungus, gnats, flies, fan tails, rollie pollies, moths, mice, spotted silver fish, fleas and

2 The tenants had made a previous complaint to the HRA in 2017 ab out a bug infestation
in the apartment, which was confirmed by the HRA’s inspection. Hill had also provided
the tenants with a 30-day notice to quit the property back in 2017 unless the tenants agreed
to sign off on an HRA form stating that the is sue had been remedied. Herrara testified at
the hearing in this case that they signed the form even th ough the bedbug issue persisted
because they didn’t want to be evicted.
3 Hill gave a notice to quit to the upstairs tenant on the same day. She had already advised
Hill that she would be leaving and had been looking for another residence.

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earwigs.” But he denied that he knew of any ongoing issue with bedbugs until he received
the HRA letter on September 16.
Hill testified that the reason for the notice to terminate the tenancy was financial,
not retaliatory. He testified that the house needed serious upgrades, the rental license was
set to expire in February 2020, and the property would not pass inspection for renewing a
rental license. Hill further testified that the property “makes $1750 a month with $1,080.75
in expenses, for a profit of $669.25 per month. ” Hill testified that he loses $1,000 per
month on his rental properties overall because of high interest rates on some of his loans
and that he was “behi nd $5,741 plus pena lties on property taxes.” Hill testified that he
planned to quit being a landlord after he sold the property in question to pay for repairs on
his other two properties and sell them.
The housing court referee found that “[H ill] proved a non-retaliatory purpose for
the Notice to Quit even after the shifting of the statutory burden . . . .” The referee found
Hill’s testimony credible and that “[o]n this record the Court will give [Hill] the benefit of
the doubt that he is sincere in his desire to no longer be a landlord of this property PERIOD,
not just as to these particular tenants. That is the real issue here.”
The district court accepted the referee’ s recommendation and entered judgment in
favor of Hill, ordering recovery of the prem ises as of December 18 , 2019. This appeal
follows.

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D E C I S I O N
On appeal from an eviction judgment, we determine whether the evidence sustains
the findings of fact and whether the fi ndings support the legal conclusions. Minneapolis
Pub. Hous. Auth. v. Greene , 463 N.W.2d 558, 560 (Minn. App. 1990). We will not set
aside findings of fact unless they are clearly erroneous and we defer to the district court’s
credibility determinations. Minn. R. Civ. P. 52.01.
Generally, a landlord may recover possessi on of a property by eviction when any
tenant holds over after termination of the tenancy by notice to quit. Minn. Stat. § 504B.285,
subd. 1(a)(3) (2018). A landlord may not, howe ver, terminate a tenancy in retaliation for
a tenant’s good-faith attempts to enforce his or her rights. Id., subd. 2(1). If the notice to
quit was served within 90 days of a tenant’s good faith action, the burden of proving that
the notice to quit was not served in whole or in part for a retaliatory purpose shall rest with
the landlord. Id., subd. 2.
“A landlord must establish by a fair pre ponderance of the evidence a substantial
nonretaliatory reason for the ev iction, arising at or within a reasonably short time before
service of the notice to quit.” Parkin v. Fitzgerald, 240 N.W.2d 828, 832 (Minn. 1976).
“A nonretaliatory reason is a reason wholly unrelated to and unmotivated by any good faith
activity on the part of the tenant protected by the statute” and includes “removal of a
housing unit from the market for a sound business reason.” Id. at 832-33 (emphasis added).
In this appeal, the tenants argue that Hill failed to rebu t the defense of retaliatory
eviction under Minn. Stat. § 504B.285, subd. 2. They rely on the fact that Hill provided
tenants with a notice to quit on the very same day that H ill received the letter from the

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HRA. They also point to the fact that only the day before, on September 15, Hill had sent
them an email complaining about being threatened with “legal and housing stuff instead of
working with me to fix proble m[s].” Finally, they point to the fact that Hill had taken
similar action in 2017 after the prior HRA complaint, when Hill gave them a notice to quit
and refused to retract it unless the tenants signed a form saying the problem had been
abated. They claim that this evidence undermines the district court’s ruling and requires a
reversal.
Hill argues in response that he was sincere in his desire to sell the property and that
this satisfies his duty to establish a legitimat e nonretaliatory motive. The district court
found Hill’s testimony credible. While the district court noted that the evidence concerning
communications between the parties “could support either parties’ arguments,” the district
court concluded nevertheless that “[o]n this record [ it] will give [Hill] the benefit of the
doubt that he is sincere in his desire to no longer be a landlord of this property. . . .” When
viewed in the context of the re cord in this case, however, sincerity alone is not enough to
rebut the presumption under Minn. St at. § 504B.285, subd. 2. Under Parkin, the
“nonretaliatory reason” must not only be “substantial” but it also must be “wholly unrelated
to and unmotivated by any good faith activity on the pa rt of the tenant protected by the
statute.” Id. at 832 (emphasis added).
In Parkin, “[t]he notice to quit came within 5 days of the housing inspector’s visit
and was contemporaneous with discussions between [the] landlord and one of the tenants
about the rate of completion of repairs.” Id. at 833. Moreover, the Parkin court noted that
“even a legitimate business purpose must be cl osely examined to ensure that it is not

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contrived or colored in any way by tenants’ protected activities.” Id. at 832. The Parkin
court reversed, finding that the landlord’s notice to quit was retaliatory. Id. at 833.
Applying Parkin to this case, we come to the sa me conclusion. We defer to the
district court’s credibility finding that Hill was sincere in his desire to be rid of tenants and
out of the landlord bu siness. But that is not the end of the inquiry. It is Hill’s burden to
prove that his desire to sell was “wholly unrelated to and unmotivated by any good faith
activity on the part of the tenant[s] . . . .” Id. at 832. It is in the application of this high
standard that the district court’s ruling falls short. Hill presented no evidence to explain
away the suspect timing that he decided to sell the property on the same day that he received
the HRA letter. Indeed, the email he sent to the tenants just the day before, on September
15, evidences an intent to stay in the landlord business and to work with the tenants to “fix
the problem.”
The only thing that changed between this email on September 15 and the notice to
quit on September 16 is that Hill received the HRA letter requiring him to abate the bug
infestation. When combined with the fact that Hill had written an email to the tenants the
day before expressly complaining about the threat of “legal and housing stuff,” it leads to
the inescapable conclusion that Hill’s desire to sell and the notice to quit were “colored” in
some manner by the tenants’ “protected activities.” Id. Thus, even though Hill had a
sincere desire to sell his rental properties, we conclude that the record does not support that
Hill’s motivation for the notice to quit was “w holly unrelated to and unmotivated by” the
HRA complaint. Id.

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We conclude that the district court clear ly erred in its determination that Hill
overcame the presumption that he acted at leas t in part in retaliation for the tenants’
complaint to the HRA.
Reversed.