Pearl City tenant wrongfully evicted after baseball bat attack, state Supreme Court rules

A Pearl City woman was wrongfully evicted from public housing after her son attacked a neighbor with a baseball bat, the Hawai‘i Supreme Court has ruled.

In 2016, Blossom Bell moved into the Hale Laulima housing development in Pearl City under a rental agreement with the Hawai‘i Public Housing Authority. Bell remained at that apartment for years, until a violent incident in 2020 shattered the peace.

According to court records, Bell’s son Daniel Lambert was visiting her apartment on May 12, 2020. That morning, Bell’s downstairs neighbor — one Aaron George — was watering plants outside and attempted to spray water near Bell’s window in order to remove a bird’s nest.

The nest “did not budge,” read one report by the HPHA, and George returned to his plants. But Lambert, having noticed the water being sprayed near his mother’s window, peered outside, and shouted at George until he “furiously stomped down the stairs” to confront him.

During a shouting match between the two, Lambert reportedly entered George’s apartment, leading George to grab a metal baseball bat to chase him out. Instead, Lambert seized the bat, wrenched it from George’s hands and swung it at George’s head.

HPHA reported that Lambert then shouted a few more obscenities and left, leaving George collapsed on the ground “surrounded by blood hemorrhaging from the top of his skull.” Eventually, George’s child called the police.

George was transported to the Pali Momi emergency room, and reportedly told police that he had suffered a subdural hematoma.

Lambert was charged with first- and second-degree assault, and burglary. The assault charges were dismissed in 2023, but he pleaded no contest to the burglary charge, resulting in a four-year deferred sentence.

However, because threatening the lives of other tenants is a violation of the HPHA rental agreement, the authority served Bell a notice of violation informing her that her tenancy would be terminated. Bell requested a grievance hearing with the O‘ahu Eviction Board, which found that Bell’s violation was “incurable” — e.g. could not be corrected — and upheld HPHA’s termination notice in Feb. 2023.

Bell challenged this hearing multiple times: first she appealed the matter to the First Circuit Court, which led to a second grievance hearing with the Eviction Board, which in turn led to a second appeal with the Circuit Court. That second appeal reinstated Bell’s lease.

HPHA then challenged the court’s decision to the Intermediate Court of Appeals, eventually bringing the matter to the state Supreme Court.

At the core of the case was the question of whether Bell had corrected the violation by permanently barring Lambert from the premises after the bat incident. Bell argued yes; HPHA rules dictate that violations which threaten fellow tenants must be corrected within 24 hours. As Lambert had left the property within 24 hours and never returned, Bell reasoned, the violation had been cured.

HPHA disagreed, arguing that the assault had already happened and that treating the violation as curable at all would require the incident to be “undone somehow,” according to Supreme Court documents.

The court ultimately agreed with Bell. In a verdict handed down April 8, Justice Sabrina McKenna wrote in the court’s opinion that the O‘ahu Eviction Board had erred and abused its own discretion in evicting Bell.

“We agree with the circuit court that Bell cured the violation as quickly as she possibly could have when she immediately and permanently barred Lambert from re-entering Hale Laulima,” McKenna wrote. “Thus, the Board erred in concluding that the only way Bell could cure her violation was to undo the assault.”

The court’s opinion — on which no justice dissented — was to uphold the Circuit Court’s second appeal, thereby reinstating Bell’s lease.

Aloha State Daily reached out to Bell and HPHA for comment.