Admadu v. Bockai, Sr.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals·Decided September 3, 2026·No. 24-CV-1150·Published

Opinion

Notice: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the Atlantic and Maryland Reporters. Users are requested to notify the Clerk of the Court of any formal errors so that corrections may be made before the bound volumes go to press.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COURT OF APPEALS No. 24-CV-1150

JANET FINDA AHMADU, APPELLANT, V.

SAHR L. BOCKAI, SR., APPELLEE.

Appeal from the Superior Court of the District of Columbia (2021-CA-002083-R(RP))

(Yvonne M. Williams, Judge)

(Submitted June 2, 2026 Decided September 3, 2026)

Charles C. Iweanoge was on the briefs for appellant.

Elizabeth J. McInturff and Richard J. Bianco were on the brief for appellee.

Before EASTERLY, DEAHL, and SHANKER, Associate Judges.

DEAHL, Associate Judge: This case concerns a piece of property that Sahr Bockai paid for in 1999 and directly titled to his sister, Janet Ahmadu. In Bockai’s telling, Ahmadu was a mere frontperson whose name he put on the title to keep the property hidden from his estranged wife, who he worried might go after his assets in a divorce. In Ahmadu’s telling, Bockai bought her the property as a gift and she

had simply allowed him to maintain and manage it. In the late 2010s, when Bockai developed Alzheimer’s disease and two of his children got into a power struggle with Ahmadu, Ahmadu sought to take direct control of the property for the first time.

Bockai then, with his children acting as his guardians, sued Ahmadu to quiet title to the property. Bockai argued that he was always the sole owner of the property and that Ahmadu agreed she “would hold the Property in name only and for Bockai’s benefit.” In the alternative, Bockai argued that even if Ahmadu was at one point the legal owner of the property, Bockai had acquired it via adverse possession because he had openly, continuously, and adversely possessed the property for more than twenty years. After a bench trial, the trial court ruled that Bockai had established his legal and equitable title to the property by adverse possession because he had been acting like the property’s true owner for two decades. The court also rejected Ahmadu’s contention that Bockai bought the property for her as a gift. Finally, without explanation, the court awarded Bockai attorney’s fees and costs.

Ahmadu now appeals, arguing that the trial court erred in (1) concluding that Bockai adversely possessed the property; (2) concluding that Bockai did not gift the property to Ahmadu, as it overlooked the legally important fact that the property was titled in her name; and (3) awarding Bockai all costs and fees without explanation. We agree with Ahmadu on her first and third claims, and partially agree with her on

the second. The record here did not support a finding of adverse possession because Ahmadu gave Bockai power of attorney to act on her behalf regarding the property, so Bockai’s management and control of the property over the decades was not hostile to her. And the trial court gave no explanation for awarding Bockai his attorney’s fees and costs, nor is there any readily apparent explanation for that decision on the record. As to Ahmadu’s second claim, we see no clear error in the trial court’s factual conclusion that Bockai never intended to gift the property to Ahmadu, but it is not clear to us what that finding might be relevant to now that we have set aside the trial court’s adverse possession ruling. We thus vacate the order declaring Bockai to be the sole owner of the property and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I. Background

In 1999, Bockai purchased property located at 1932 Martin Luther King Jr.

Avenue Southeast, in the District’s Anacostia neighborhood, so he could open a pharmacy. How Bockai purchased the property underlies the parties’ dispute over its ownership today.

Although Bockai contracted to buy the property, and personally paid a $20,000 deposit to purchase it, he directed that the title be issued in his sister’s name using a power of attorney that she gave to him. That is, Ahmadu received legal title

to the property directly from its prior owners. That power of attorney also allowed Bockai to act in Ahmadu’s interests with respect to the property. For instance, Bockai took out a $180,000 loan against the property in Ahmadu’s name to finance his purchase of the property, though Bockai himself later paid off that loan in full.

According to his then-accountant, Bockai bought the property like this to protect his assets from his wife whom he was separated from. He planned to buy the property from Ahmadu at some later time for a nominal amount. Bockai also told others he put the property in Ahmadu’s name “for formality[’s] sake,” and he had similarly bought properties in other family members’ names. For example, Bockai used his son’s name to buy property in 2001, unbeknownst to his son. After learning about it years later, his son transferred the property to Bockai in a “$0 transaction.” Bockai did something similar using his daughter’s name. She never transferred the property to him even though she considered it his property.

Ahmadu painted a very different picture of her arrangement with Bockai. In her telling, Bockai bought the Anacostia property for her in appreciation of her years of support as he immigrated to the United States and pursued his pharmacy degree. Because Ahmadu was not in a position to take care of the property herself, she gave Bockai her power of attorney so he could manage it and open a pharmacy there. Ahmadu did not charge Bockai any rent, but instead allowed him to spend any

proceeds from the property on building improvements, and to give “any little change” back to Ahmadu to send to their family in Sierra Leone. Ahmadu would regularly talk to Bockai about the pharmacy and the building’s tenants, but she was otherwise hands off because she trusted Bockai to manage the property. As Ahmadu saw it, Bockai’s management of the property—paying the operating expenses, renting out the top floor to tenants, and claiming the property’s rental income on his tax return—was consistent with their arrangement. Ahmadu further highlighted that she was listed alongside Bockai as a landlord for one of the commercial tenants’ leases.

For nearly two decades, whatever arrangement the siblings had, things went off without a hitch. They never got into any arguments about the property, and Ahmadu never revoked the power of attorney she gave to Bockai concerning the property. But by the late-2010s, Bockai had developed Alzheimer’s disease, and Ahmadu found herself at odds with his children about who would act as his guardian. Eventually, after contentious court proceedings in Maryland, Bockai’s children were appointed as his guardians. The children asserted that the Anacostia property had always belonged to their father, and that Ahmadu was trying to take advantage of his mental state by claiming the property as her own.

Acting as his guardians, Bockai’s children then filed this suit on his behalf.

They argued that Bockai was the sole owner of the property and that Ahmadu agreed she would serve as a frontperson who “would hold the Property in name only and for Bockai’s benefit.” In the alternative, they argued that Bockai had acquired the property via adverse possession after more than two decades of continuous possession during which he operated his pharmacy and rented out the top floor, as one would expect of the true owner. In the further alternative, they claimed that Ahmadu would be unjustly enriched if she were permitted to keep the property as the siblings understood it was Bockai’s and Bockai is the one who paid for the property.

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