South Broadway’s Gypsy House Cafe has been shuttered since March, but the funky, well-loved coffee shop hasn’t been fully laid to rest.
A few days before it closed last spring, owners Doniece and Dena Derani said they were evicted amid rising tensions with their landlord, Jake Malman of Kofe LLC.
Doniece told us they only learned the space was up for lease when prospective tenants showed up to tour the building. She said the business was up to date on payments to Malman, arguing the landlord had unfairly passed maintenance costs onto Gypsy House.
Malman this week won a case seeking damages for unpaid rent, insurance, taxes and utilities from the sisters. Gypsy House has been ordered to pay Malman $122,294.95, about $6,500 of which covers attorneys’ fees, after losing the case by default.
Malman originally filed the eviction case in January, saying the sisters owed about $77,000 in back rent dating back to 2021, which grew by hundreds of dollars each week. Judge Andrew Patrick McCallin ordered the defendants to leave the property in March, then ordered them this week to pay damages.
The Derani sisters did not respond to a request for comment. In a February court filing, Doniece Derani stated that she had “paid the base rent under the lease,” but that the landlord had failed to provide an annual accounting of additional rent.
“As such, I did not receive any notice that the amount I was paying was deficient,” she wrote.
But the court recently struck the Deranis’ filing as invalid, meaning the coffee house owners had “failed to properly file an answer” to the case. A scheduled trial date was canceled, and the Deranis lost the case by default.
The Deranis’ answer to the case was rejected because they had failed to find a licensed attorney, which is required in certain cases involving more than $15,000 in potential damages, McCallin wrote.
Malman said he felt vindicated and that he had been smeared in local news reports.
“I offered to settle with them many times, pay $10,000 and just get out of the building. And they didn’t want to pay anything, and they didn’t want to leave the building, and they just wanted to cause a stink,” he said. “They want to spin it in the press and act like they’re the victim.”
Malman said this was the first time in a decade that he’s brought a tenant to court.
