Kingstown Mobile Home Park v. Strashnick

• Decision Date: 26 June 2001
• Docket Number: No. 99-166-Appeal.,99-166-Appeal.
• Citation: 774 A.2d 847
• Parties: KINGSTOWN MOBILE HOME PARK, Pearl Krzak v. Michael A. STRASHNICK.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

774 A.2d 847

KINGSTOWN MOBILE HOME PARK, Pearl Krzak v. Michael A. STRASHNICK.

No. 99-166-Appeal.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

June 26, 2001.

Present WILLIAMS, C.J., LEDERBERG, BOURCIER, FLANDERS, and GOLDBERG, JJ.

John J. Kupa, Jr., North Kingstown, for Plaintiff.

Richard L. Walsh, III, North Kingstown, for Defendant.

OPINION

LEDERBERG, Justice.

Can a tenant of a mobile home park be evicted for reasons other than those enumerated in the Rhode Island Mobile and Manufactured Homes Statute (mobile home act) if the tenant does not have a written lease and has remained in possession as a month-to-month or holdover tenant? Pearl Krzak (Krzak), the owner and operator of Kingstown Mobile Home Park (the park), has appealed a judgment by the Superior Court that denied her eviction claim and her constitutional challenge to G.L.1956 § 31-44-2 (the statute) and granted the counterclaims of her tenant, Michael A. Strashnick (Strashnick), for malicious prosecution and reprisal. A summary of the pertinent facts and the applicable statutes is presented as necessary for our discussion of the issues on appeal.

Factual Background and Relevant Statutes

Since 1946, Krzak has owned and operated Kingstown Mobile Home Park in North Kingstown, Rhode Island. The park contains approximately 125 mobile home lots, all but seven or eight of which were occupied at the time of trial, each at a monthly rental fee between $260 and $285 per lot.In 1993, Strashnick bought an older mobile home formerly owned by Krzak's son's mother-in-law, and he became a tenant at 29 A Krzak Road.

Apparently from the beginning, the relationship between landlord and tenant was contentious. Krzak, who had a policy of not granting year-long leases unless they began in January and ended on December 31, testified that only about twenty-five of her tenants had leases and that she considered all other residents "month-to-month" tenants. Given that § 31-44-7(1)(xiv) requires that the operator of a mobile home park "[p]rovide a written lease of not less than one year unless the resident requests in writing a shorter term, or unless a resident in writing states that he or she does not desire a written lease," Strashnick, whose tenancy began after August 1993, refused to sign the four-month lease offered by Krzak. Instead, he requested a one-year lease, which Krzak refused. At that point Strashnick left without signing, taking with him a copy of the lease and park regulations.

At the time he applied for tenancy in the park, Strashnick was required to pay a nonrefundable $140 application fee. Section 31-44-3(8)(i) states in pertinent part that "[a] prospective resident shall not be charged an entrance fee for the privilege of leasing or occupying a lot, except as provided in § 31-44-4," which is the section relating to the sale of mobile and manufactured homes.¹ Although this section was applicable to Strashnick's purchase of an existing mobile home in the park, a nonrefundable fee was violative of Rhode Island law, and Strashnick subtracted the amount from his first rental payment. Krzak vehemently denied this transaction at trial, acknowledging that such a charge wasillegal. Krzak's denial was contradicted by her handwritten notation on Strashnick's canceled check: "nonrefundable application processing fee and credit check."²

In late November 1996, Strashnick and other residents received a notice postmarked November 27, 1996, for a rental increase effective January 1, 1997. Because G.L.1956 § 31-44.1-2(b) provides that "[a]ny person who owns, operates, or maintains a mobile and manufactured home park pursuant to the provisions of chapter 44 of title 31 shall give the mobile home owners of the park sixty (60) days written notice prior to any lot rent increase going into effect," Strashnick enclosed a letter to Krzak in his January rental payment, explaining that in light of the improper notice, he was paying his usual rent and would comply with the increase only when he received the sixty-days' notice provided by law.

At trial, Krzak testified that in the previous five years, she had evicted only a few tenants from the park, all for the nonpayment of rent, but that she was seeking to evict Strashnick as a month-to-month tenant for "all the things that he's done without permission." Strashnick, in addition to other extensive renovations of his mobile home, replaced an existing metal garden shed with another shed, removed some shrubbery, and poured a concrete slab. Krzak also testified that she did "not appreciate it" when Strashnick addressed her as "Pearly baby" and used other offensive language. She expressed her frustration with Strashnick: "He wouldn't do anything that he doesn't feel like he wants to do, and he tells ya that, too."

The record before us revealed that differences between the parties frequently ended in Krzak's initiating litigation, the long saga of which we need not discuss in detail for our analysis. In July 1995,Krzak filed an eviction claim against Strashnick for violating parking regulations and for erecting too large a garden shed.³ After a hearing in August 1996, a District Court judge permitted Strashnick to cure the breach and dismissed his counterclaim for "harassment." In May 1996, as the result of another complaint by Krzak, Strashnick was permitted by a Superior Court justice to erect a carport over the then-existing concrete slab. In October 1996 and August 1997, Krzak sent notices of "Termination of Tenancy" to Strashnick, requesting that he remove himself and his mobile home from the park within sixty days. The first notice stated that Strashnick's tenancy was "a periodic one on a month-to-month basis" and was being terminated "pursuant to Rhode Island General Laws 31-44-2 and 34-18-37." A second notice added that the reason for the month-to-month tenancy was Strashnick's failure to sign a lease. Strashnick ignored both notices, and in October 1997, Krzak filed a complaint for Strashnick's eviction as a holdover tenant. After a District Court judge found in favor of Strashnick, Krzak filed for a trial de novo in Superior Court. Strashnick responded by filing a counterclaim for reprisal under § 31-44-5, retaliatory conduct under G.L. 1956 § 34-18-46, abuse of process, malicious prosecution, and trespass.

A bench trial was held in the fall of 1998, the outcome of which is now before us on appeal. The trial justice granted Strashnick's motion for a judgment on partial findings because Krzak had failed to comply with § 31-44-2(a), which limits the termination of a mobile home park tenancy to six enumerated circumstances. The justice further ruled that a constitutional attack on § 31-44-2 — which Krzak proposed to submit should her eviction claim fail — was not ripe for consideration because the Attorney General had not been notified. Strashnick then proceeded with his counterclaim. The trialjustice, after dismissing the claims for abuse of process and for trespass, awarded Strashnick $780 on the reprisal claim, and $920 for compensatory damage and $2,000 for punitive damage on the malicious prosecution claim. Krzak appealed.

Constitutional Challenge

In her appeal, Krzak argued that the Legislature did not contemplate creating near-permanent mobile home tenancies and that an interpretation of § 31-44-2 that limits eviction only to the six conditions specified therein would violate constitutional property rights. Although she admitted that the Attorney General's office had not been notified before trial, she contended that the Superior Court justice erroneously refused to consider her constitutional challenge. Our review of the trial transcript revealed that Krzak based her claim for eviction "on the basic common law doctrine of holdover tenancy" and that only if the claim was not permitted on that basis, did she intend to pursue a "constitutional argument which we will brief further and submit to the Court upon proper application to the Attorney General." In response, the Superior Court justice decided that without notification of the Attorney General, the constitutional attack was not ripe for consideration.

General Laws 1956 § 9-30-11 provides in pertinent part:

"In any proceeding which involves the validity of a municipal ordinance or franchise, the municipality shall be made a party, and shall be entitled to be heard, and if the statute, ordinance, or franchise is alleged to be unconstitutional, the attorney general of the state shall also be served with a copy of the proceeding and be entitled to be heard."

Similarly, Rule 24(d) of the Superior Court Rules of Civil Procedure anent intervention by the Attorney General requires:

"When the constitutionality of an act of the legislature is drawn in question in any action to which the state or an officer, agency, or employee thereof is not a party, the party asserting theunconstitutionality of the act shall serve the attorney general with a copy of the proceeding within such time to afford the attorney general an opportunity to intervene."⁴

We have addressed this issue repeatedly and have held that when a party "both fail[s] and neglect[s] to comply with its clear obligation when challenging the constitutionality of a state statute to `serve the attorney general with a copy of the proceedings,' * * * [w]e do not believe that this Court should undertake to determine the constitutionality of a state statute in a given case without first affording the Attorney General the opportunity to intervene and be heard. See Crossman v. Erickson, 570 A.2d 651, 654 (R.I.1990)." Global Waste Recycling, Inc. v. Mallette, 762 A.2d 1208, 1214 (R.I.2000). Although on May 14, 1998, Krzak amended her original complaint to include an attack on the constitutionality of § 31-44-2, she failed to give the required notice to the Attorney General, and thus we affirm the trial justice's decision to preclude the constitutional challenge.

In her appeal, Krzak suggested that the...