$20 Million Awarded to Pair in Housing Suit

The city will pay $20 million to a woman and her son who won a lawsuit against the municipality two years ago for obstructing their efforts to open boarding homes for Alzheimer’s patients in high-end neighborhoods, officials announced Thursday.

The award is the largest single payout in the city’s legal history, City Atty. Robert E. Shannon said. Shirley McClure and her son, Jason, won a lawsuit in 2004 against the city for harassing them with a torrent of building code citations to keep them from converting six homes into boarding facilities in the early 1990s.

The city appealed the court decision, but legal costs were mounting, Shannon said. The city plans to recover at least $8 million of the settlement from insurance policies.