Landlord/Tenant Law

Introduction: Landlord-Tenant Law and the Fair Housing Clinic

While the focus of the Fair Housing Clinic is education and outreach to the public on fair housing rights and laws, the clinic is committed as well to providing the public with an additional source of expertise and support on housing issues overall. Equal housing is fair housing, and fair housing is always seeking to be equal in all respects. This is especially true of Landlord-Tenant law. The clinic can also provide support for residents on the critical issues in the landlord-tenant arena.

Landlord-Tenant Law in the District of Columbia: The History

While it is often stated by many that the District of Columbia is a pro-tenant jurisdiction, this is hardly the case. The District of Columbia is simply a jurisdiction where tenants have some due process and a small amount of substantive rights in order to level the playing field in their landlord-tenant relationships. It was not always this way. In fact, it wasn’t until the 1960’s and 70’s when a dedicated group of lawyers from a new legal services program called the Neighborhood Legal Services Program challenged the status quo and changed the system for the better. In several important areas of the law, their counter suits against landlords in the city resulted in a more balanced playing field when it comes to landlord-tenant cases. The areas affected by the work of the Neighborhood Legal Services Program of the District of Columbia include the following:

Right to jury trial
Void lease if unit is in violation of the housing code
Retaliatory eviction actions (landlords sued tenant because they asserted their rights under the housing code) brought by landlords cannot be maintained.
Prospective rent can be paid into the court registry while a landlord-tenant case (the disputed rent) is being litigated by the court system;
Apartments where a tenant resides possess an implied warranty of habitability that the unit complies with the housing code when a tenant resides there.

The effect of these cases was dramatic. With respect to implied warranty of habitability, the principle has become revolutionary across the country as numerous jurisdictions have adopted the ideal and made it the law in their own court system in landlord-tenant cases. Retaliatory evictions also are forbidden in jurisdictions all across the country. Lawyers in the District of Columbia working at the Neighborhood Legal Services Program were most responsible for these changes locally and indirectly in other cities and states as well.

A summary of this radical rearrangement of judicial process in the District of Columbia is important to recall because even today tenants face these same issues.

The first important decisions to be rendered by the D.C. Court of Appeals in this area of law were the court decision in Brown v. Southall Realty Co. The decision was rendered on November 7, 1968. The case involved Lillie Brown, a tenant of Southall Realty, a District of Columbia realty company. Southall Realty Co. sued Ms. Brown for non-payment of rent. Ms. Brown resided in an apartment at 1340 Kenyon Street N.W. Washington D.C. Ms. Brown contended at the trial level that rent was not due to her landlord because the apartment contained significant housing code violations at the time the unit was leased. This according to Ms. Brown rendered the lease contract between the parties illegal.

The trial was held in the Court of General Sessions and as expected, judgment was entered against Ms. Brown. She was ordered to pay the rent owed. The Brown case addressed two important legal concepts. First, it determined whether a lease agreement between a landlord and a tenant is a contract; and second, Brown determined whether the existence of housing code violations in an apartment that was the subject of the agreement between the parties, rendered the lease agreement illegal. With respect to both legal concepts, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Lillie Brown:

Although appellant notes a number or errors, we consider the allegation that the trial court erred in failing to declare the lease agreement void as an illegal contract both meritorious and completely dispositive, and for this reason we reverse.

Due to the fact that at the time the lease was executed there were housing code violations in existence that rendered the unit “unsafe and unsanitary,” and the fact that the landlord was aware of the violations, the contract was declared illegal.

“The lease contract was, therefore, entered into in violation of the Housing Regulations,” the Court wrote, “requiring that they be safe and sanitary and that they be properly maintained.” In other words, the law of the District of Columbia required rental units to maintain a certain level of habitability; in this instance, the landlord knowingly leased a unit that violated those laws yet leased the unit anyway.

Very importantly, the Brown decision by the Court was rooted in contract law. The Court held that ‘(t)he general rule is that an illegal contract, made in violation of the statutory prohibition designed for police or regulatory purposes, is void and confers no right upon the wrongdoer.’

Edwards v. Habib. was another critically important case in the development of housing law for tenants in the District of Columbia. Edwards solidified once and for all that a landlord could not retaliate against a tenant because the tenant reported housing code violations in a rental unit to the proper governmental authorities. It was an extremely important ruling in regards to the ability of tenants to assert their rights under the law. The tenant in Edwards was Yvonne Edwards. Ms Edwards, at the time of the lawsuit, was employed by the federal government at the Department of Commerce on salary so low that Ms. Edwards, the mother of three children, lived below the poverty level.

Using the U.S. Constitution as support for its opinion, the Court held that to allow a landlord to violate the law by using a threat of eviction against tenants who complained of housing code violations defeated the congressional intent innate in the city’s housing code. In other words, Congress passed the housing code for use in the city so to allow landlords to circumvent the code by filing lawsuits against tenants who sought protection of that code rendered the code powerless. It was a no-brainer.

Javins v. First National Realty is probably the most well known of the important cases that changed landlord-tenant law in Washington D.C. and around the country. Javins fundamentally reworked the relationship between landlords and tenants in the District of Columbia. For decades, tenants had not been allowed to present any evidence that their apartments were leased to them or were being leased to them in violation of the housing code of the District of Columbia. Javins was the case that finally changed that relationship.

As the Court famously stated at the beginning of the case, “[t]hese cases present the question whether housing code violations which arise during the term of a lease have any effect upon the tenant’s obligation to pay rent.” While Javins discussed numerous important issues, the key legal concept that the court ultimately decided is now known as an implied warranty of habitability in rental housing. This principle would have the greatest impact on the landlord-tenant law than any other concept in the last 40 years. It, in effect, changed the way in which rental housing was defined. The famous decision in Javins was rendered on May 7, 1970. The decision reversed and held that “a warranty of habitability, measured by the standards set out in the Housing Regulations for the District of Columbia, is implied by operation of law.” A “breach” of the “warranty gives rise to the usual remedies for breach of contract. Tenants, according to the decision, had an “interest” in the “land” below the apartment. is not as important as the tenant being most interested in the overall package of services from received as a result of the lease agreement. Landlord-tenant law had finally been modernized to demonstrate the reality of “American city dwellers, both rich and poor,” seeking ‘shelter’ that included an important roster of “goods and services ” that “includes not merely walls and ceilings, but also adequate heat, light and ventilation, serviceable plumbing facilities, secure windows and doors, proper sanitation, and proper maintenance.” The decision was revolutionary in spirit. Feudal land systems were, at last, updated to represent the reality that the agricultural age was over and the industrial age was in effect.

Another case that transformed landlord-tenant law in the District of Columbia and around the country is known as Bell v. Tsintolas. The case created a procedure where tenants were required only to pay future rents into the court registry while a case was heard in the court system. The court concluded that “future rent be paid into the registry of the court as it becomes due during the pendency of the litigation” under its power of “equitable jurisdiction.” The court ordered “prepayment” was “not favored and should be ordered only in limited circumstances…on motion of the landlord, and only after notice and opportunity for a hearing on such a motion.” It was a life changing case for the poor who often sacrificed their chances to fight a case in court because of the previous procedure that did not allow tenants such flexibility.

Finally, Pernell v. Southall Realty, a key U.S. Supreme Court case, should be mentioned here as well. The case would establish once and for all that tenants had a right to a jury trial in the District of Columbia in landlord-tenant cases. A lawyer from the Neighborhood Legal Services Program, Norman Barnett, who is also a graduate of the Howard University School of Law, presented a straightforward argument again handled the case. His excellent brief stated:

The language of the Seventh Amendment shows, and decisions of this Court confirm, that the constitutional standard of trial by jury is basically historical and analytical: the right is preserved where the claim is a “legal claim” that would be tried by jury under English common law prevailing when the Seventh Amendment was adopted.

In the end, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 9-0 in favor of the petitioner, Dave Pernell. Justice Thurgood Marshall, a graduate of the Howard University School of Law wrote the opinion stating that the District of Columbia’s court system “must preserve a right to a jury trial.” Landlord-tenant courts, Justice Marshall wrote, are here to see that “justice is done before a man is evicted from his home.”

Of course, change did not end in 1974 with the Pernell case. The public interest lawyers of the city continued to fight to equal justice in the landlord-tenant system every year and progress continues to be made. There have been so many significant victories in the landlord-tenant system, there are simply too many to note. The five biggest cases, as discussed above, are; Javins v. First National Realty; Pernell v. Southall Realty; Edwards v. Habib; and Bell v. Tsintolas. These cases form the crux of legal protections for tenants and guidance for landlords conducting business in the city.

Landlord-Tenant Case Law — The District of Columbia: Leading Cases

Brown v. Southall Realty 237 A2d 834 (D.C. App 1968) — Void Lease concept
Javins v. First National Realty 428 F.2d 1071 (C.A.D.C. 1970) — Implied warranty of habitability
Pernell v Southall Realty 416 U.S. 363, 365 (1974) — Right to trial by jury, landlord-tenant cases
Edwards v. Habib 397 F.2d 687 (C.A.D.C. 1968) — Retailiatory eviction
Bell v. Tsintolas 430 F2d 474 (C.A.D.C. 1970) — Rent escrow payments into court registry
Jonathan Woodner Co. v. Breeden 665 A.2d 929 (D.C App 1995) — Breach of contract, damages, punitive damages
Entrepreneur, Ltd. v. Yasuna 498 A.2d 1151 (D.C App. 1985
Mahdi v. Poretsky Management, Inc. 433 A.2d 1085 (D.C. App 1981)
McNeal v. Habib 346 A.2d 508 (D.C. App.1975)
Diamond Housing Corp. v. Robinson 257 A.2d 492 (D.C.App. 1969)
Edwards v. Habib 366 F.2d 628 (C.A.D.C. 1965)