Aluli v. Trusdell
| Decision Date | 04 April 1973 |
| Docket Number | No. 5256,5256 |
| Citation | 54 Haw. 417,508 P.2d 1217 |
| Parties | Aima Neaulani ALULI et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Richard V. TRUSDELL, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Hawaii Supreme Court |
Syllabus by the Court
1. In a month-to-month tenancy. landlord's right of possession is an incident to ownership, while tenant's right of possession is an expectancy only; these rights must be balanced.
2. Under a month-to-month tenancy, a landlord had the right to recover possession of the demised premises upon the termination of such tenancy and bring summary possession action under HRS § 666-1.
3. A citizen who asserts his First Amendment rights is not necessarily constitutionally protected from lessening of his interest in the subject matter about which he wishes to exercise his First Amendment rights, if the rights of other parties in the same subject matter are also legally assertable.
4. First Amendment rights claimed by a month-to-month tenant do not operate to prefer the tenant's expectancy of continued possession of the premises over the right of landlord to regain possession at the end of the tenant's term.
5. The recovery by a landlord of the demised premises under HRS § 666-1 does not in any way deprive a tenant from exercising ercising his constitutional rights because he can exercise these rights, the rights to free speech, freedom of association, and the right to petition government for a redress of grievances, whether he is in possession or out of possession of the particular demised premises. Thus, his First Amendment rights have not been infringed or abrogated by the action of a landlord.
6. Common law or judge-made law is often the functional equivalent of statutory law for the purpose of definition of state action, but not every judicial enforcement of law constitutes a sufficient exercise of state power so as to require constitutional restraints.
7. Under HRS § 666-1, a landlord is permitted to recover possession of the demised premises when he is entitled to such relief and the court in granting such relief in no way abrogates or infringes upon the First Amendment rights of a tenant. The only function of courts under the statute is to restore to landlord possession of demised premises when landlord is entitled to regain possession thereof.
Edward C. Kemper, III, Honolulu (Mattoch, Edmunds, Kemper & Brown, Honolulu, of counsel), for defendant-appellant.
Keith J. Steiner, Honolulu (Padgett, Greeley, Marumoto & Steiner, Honolulu. of counsel), for plaintiffs-appellees.
Before RICHARDSON, C. J., ABE, LEVINSON and KOBAYASHI, JJ., and Circuit Judge WONG in place of MARUMOTO, J., disqualified.
The plaintiffs-appellees, Aima Neaulani Aluli, et al., hereinafter referred to as 'Landlord' are the owners of 'The Iolani,' an apartment building in Honolulu, Hawaii, and the defendant-appellant, Richard V. Trusdell, hereinafter referred to as 'Tenant' occupied one of the apartments in the building on a month-to-month tenancy. On August 4, 1971, the landlord served upon the tenant a notice to vacate on or before August 31, 1971. Upon the tenant's refusal to vacate the premises, the landlord commenced summary possession proceedings in the Honolulu District Court on September 9, 1971.
The tenant's second defense stated:
The primary purpose of this eviction is to block, hamper or obstruct the tenant union of which the defendant is the organizer and member in violation of the defendant's rights of freedom of speech, freedom of association and right to petition government for a redress of grievances, and defendant's inherent right to petition government all as is more fully outlined in the counterclaim.
Upon the trial, the district court granted summary possession for the landlord, ruling that the second defense did not raise any valid constitutional defenses to the summary possession action. The tenant appealed from the judgment. The primary issue in this appeal is whether the tenant had any valid constitutional defenses to the action.
Before stating our reasons for concluding that the tenant's allegations do not raise a constitutional defense, we wish to point out what we consider inadequacies and one sideness of the tenant's argument on the issue.
First, we believe that the rights of the landlord and tenant should be balanced. The landlord seeks to vindicate his right of possession as an incident of the ownership of the subject premises. On the other hand, the tenant's right is a permissive right of possession pursuant to a month-to-month tenancy terminable at the end of any month at the option of either party. Thus, these two 'rights' may be the opposite sides of the same coin.
Second, the tenant appears to have assumed that the landlord does not have any First Amendment rights. If it is true that he is seeking possession of the rented premises for the sole reason that he disagrees or dislikes the tenant's communicative or associative activities, is not the landlord also protected by the First Amendment in expressing these disagreements or dislikes? Is not the requesting of judicial relief 'petitioning government for redress of grievances'?
Third, in Lemle v. Breeden, 51 Haw. 426, 462 p.2d 470 (1969), we stated that (Emphasis added.) 51 Haw. 426, 433, 462 P.id 470, 474.
Thus, the landlord-tenant relationship is a contractual one in our jurisdiction. If we accept the tenant's contention, it would mean that we would be substantially altering this relationship and impairing the traditional right of a landlord to recover possession of the demised premises under the terms of a lease. Or otherwise stated, the tenant's obligation under a month-to-month tenancy to return the possession of the demised premises to the landlord upon the termination of such tenancy is abrogated. United States v. Blumenthal, 315 F.2d 351 (3d Cir. 1963); Wormood v. Alton Bay Camp Meeting Ass'n, 87 N.H. 136, 175 A. 233 (1934); De Wolfe v. Roberts, 229 Mass. 410, 412, 118 N.E. 885, 887 (1918). If this court were to rule as contended by the tenant, its ruling might contravene the provisions of the United States Constitution, Article I, Section 10, which states in part: 'No State shall . . . pass any . . . law impairing the Obligation of Contracts.' 1
We are upholding the district court's ruling that the First Amendment rights 2 claimed by the tenant did not constitute a defense to the summary possession action brought by the landlord for the following two reasons:
(1) We do not believe that the tenant's First Amendment rights have been infringed upon or abrogated by the actions of the landlord. Even after the landlord regains possession of the premises under the summary possession action, the tenant may retain membership in the tenant's union, petition the government for redress of grievances and speak as freely about the condition of the premises, as when he is in possession of the premises. Furthermore, we do not see how the tenant is punished in any way for his activities. Being a month-to-month tenant, he had no right to demand that his tenancy be extended once the current term expired. When the landlord repossesses the premises at the end of the current term, the tenant is not being deprived of anything except his nonproprietary expectancy that his tenancy will be extended another term.
At most, the tenant's only complaint is that allowing the landlord to regain possession of the premises will lessen his interest in the subject matter about which he wishes to exercise his First Amendment rights. We do not believe the First Amendment rights claimed by the tenant operate to prefer the tenant's expectancy of continued possession of the premises over the right of the landlord to regain possession at the end of the tenant's term, so as to encourage the tenant to continue exercising his First Amendment rights in the hopes that the conditions of his tenancy would be improved.
As we have already stated, whether he is dispossessed or not, he can continue to exercise the constitutional rights he claims that the summary possession action deprives him of. Nothing is being taken away from him by the summary possession action because the landlord, under the terms of the month-to-month tenancy as incidental to the ownership of the premises, has the right to regain possession of the premises upon the termination thereof.
(2) We cannot see how the requisite state action exists in this case. The tenant's contention of state action requisite for the application of First Amendment guarantees is unsupported by the authorities he cites. The tenant relies on New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 84 S.Ct. 710, 11 L.Ed.2d 686 (1964); Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, 68 S.Ct. 836, 92 L.Ed. 1161 (1948); and American Federation of Labor v. Swing, 312 U.S. 321, 61 S.Ct. 568, 85 L.Ed. 855 (1941), in finding that the use of the court by the landlord to regain possession of the premises under the summary possession statute constituted state action. We believe that each of these cases is distinguishable from the case now before us.
Shelley v. Kraemer, supra, 334 U.S. 1, 68 S.Ct. 836, 92 L.Ed. 1161 (1948), established that a state court's enforcement of 'restrictive covenants which have as their purpose the exclusion of persons of designated race or color from the ownership or occupancy of real property,' id. at 4, 68 S.Ct. at 838, constituted state action and thus violated the equal protection provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United Staes Constitution. The United States Supreme Court significantly expanded the concept of state action in this decision which spawned uncertainties that are still unresolved. One commentator, after...
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