Caulder v. Durham Housing Authority

Decision Date06 November 1970
Docket NumberNo. 14095.,14095.
PartiesLillian CAULDER, Appellant, v. DURHAM HOUSING AUTHORITY, and C. S. Oldham, Carl R. Harris, E. W. Midgette, H. F. Seeman, Jr., Charles A. Roach and Artis Plummer, individually and in their official capacity as members of the Durham Housing Authority, Appellees.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Charles Lawrence James, Winston Salem, N. C., for appellant.

William Y. Manson, Durham, N. C. (Daniel K. Edwards, Durham, N. C., on brief) for appellees.

Before SOBELOFF and WINTER, Circuit Judges, and LEWIS, District Judge.

WINTER, Circuit Judge:

In Thorpe v. Housing Authority of Durham, 393 U.S. 268, 89 S.Ct. 518, 21 L.Ed.2d 474 (1969), the Supreme Court held that the Durham Housing Authority, one of the defendants in this case, must comply with a Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) circular which requires that before a tenant can be evicted he must be given notice of the reasons for the eviction and an opportunity to reply to those reasons.1 In that case the Court declined, on the ground of prematurity, to define the incidents of a hearing which would comport with the requirements of due process. Those questions are before us now in plaintiff's suit for a declaratory judgment that she was denied due process of law by the termination of her lease and an injunction to prohibit the Housing Authority from evicting her or making any attempt to evict her without compliance with her due process rights.

The district court dismissed the complaint on the ground that even if federal jurisdiction was present "justice and comity would best be served by giving the North Carolina courts an opportunity to hear petitioner's claim." We believe that plaintiff has alleged the denial of due process rights for which redress is presently available in the federal courts. We reverse and remand the case to the district court for further proceedings consistent with our views.

I

Since 1963, plaintiff has been a tenant in a federally assisted public housing project owned and operated by the Housing Authority of the City of Durham, North Carolina. The Housing Authority is an agency of the State of North Carolina. N.C.Gen.Stat. § 157-1 et seq. She occupies an apartment under a written lease creating a month-to-month tenancy with provision for automatic renewals for successive terms of one month unless either party gives notice in writing fifteen days before the end of any month that the lease will terminate at the expiration of that term. On February 19, 1969, she attended a meeting with the Housing Authority project manager, at which she was informed that several of her neighbors had complained of the conduct and morals of her children. The identity of the complaining neighbors, however, was not disclosed. On March 1, 1969, she received written notice from the Housing Authority that her lease would be terminated for cause at the expiration of the current month. The letter specified neither the names of the complainants nor the offenses of which her children were accused but asserted that she had been previously informed of the causes.

The plaintiff obtained legal assistance and requested a written list of specific charges. A meeting with the executive director of the Housing Authority was arranged and held on March 18. At the meeting she and her attorney were informed that the meeting constituted "an administrative hearing" — presumably intended to comply with the decision in Thorpe. The executive director read aloud from certain papers which he represented as affidavits. The papers contained complaints about the plaintiff's children, which included allegations of specific immoral acts, all of which the plaintiff denied. Neither plaintiff nor her attorney was permitted to see the affidavits nor were the names of the complainants disclosed.

Nine days later a hearing was conducted before the commissioners of the Housing Authority. The commissioners denied the requests of plaintiff's attorney for the specifics of the charges, the names of the complainants, and the rules governing the manner in which the hearing would be conducted. The evidence of the complaining witnesses was heard in camera with no opportunity for plaintiff to challenge or cross-examine them. Her attorney, however, was permitted to introduce affidavits from neighbors who considered plaintiff a satisfactory tenant. Plaintiff was not told the names of the persons making complaints nor the dates of specific acts of misconduct or immoral behavior on the part of her children.

When the Housing Authority persisted in its decision not to renew her lease, she brought suit in the district court under 28 U.S.C.A. § 1343(3) and 42 U.S. C.A. § 1983. Her complaint sought a declaratory judgment that she was denied due process of law by the termination of her lease without adequate notice of the specific reasons for its termination and without a hearing (1) at which the names of the complainants would be disclosed, (2) at which she would be able to cross-examine the complainants and other witnesses against her, (3) at which the complainants would give their evidence in her presence, and (4) for which there would be predisclosed procedural rules. She also sought an injunction to prohibit the Housing Authority from evicting her or making any attempt to evict her without compliance with the requirements of due process. At the time suit was filed in the district court, plaintiff apparently made no effort to obtain a preliminary restraining order. Five days later defendants instituted a small claim action for summary ejectment in the state district court. A motion for a temporary restraining order in the United States District Court was then filed and restraint was granted on May 16, 1969. The proceeding in the state district court before a magistrate thereof was held in abeyance. When the United States District Court dismissed the complaint, plaintiff filed a notice of appeal and a motion for an injunction pending an appeal to us. Before the motion for injunction pending appeal could be acted upon, defendants pressed their action before the magistrate and obtained an order of summary eviction. Plaintiff appealed from this order to the state district court, but the appeal has not been perfected because plaintiff has been unable to post bond in an amount equivalent to one year's rent, as required by N.C.Gen.Stat. § 42-34, in order to have her appeal heard.

II

The district court seemed uncertain of its subject matter jurisdiction over this case, but we entertain no such doubts. 28 U.S.C.A. § 1343(3) grants original jurisdiction to the district courts "to redress the deprivation, under color of any State law, * * * of any right, privilege or immunity secured by the Constitution of the United States * * *." In addition, 42 U.S.C.A. § 1983 provides that "every person who, under color of any statute * * * of any State * * * subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States * * * to the deprivation of any rights * * * secured by the Constitution * * * shall be liable to the party injured in a * * * suit in equity." Plaintiff's complaint alleges that the Housing Authority, a state agency, has deprived her of the hearing required by the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment. Hence, measured by these statutes, the district court had original jurisdiction.

Defendants assert that the anti-injunction statute, 28 U.S.C.A. § 2283, constitutes a bar to plaintiff's prayer for an injunction against an execution of the judgment of eviction obtained in the state court proceedings. Although the point is not fully developed in defendants' brief (and not mentioned in plaintiff's brief), the defendants contend that a state court is as competent a forum as the district court to adjudicate plaintiff's claim. Reference is made to the concluding language in Thorpe, "we have no reason to believe that once petitioner is told the reasons for her eviction she cannot effectively challenge their legal sufficiency in whatever eviction proceedings may be brought in the North Carolina courts." 393 U.S. at 284, 89 S.Ct. at 527. Therefore, they contend, it cannot be said that it will be necessary for the district court to enjoin state proceedings "in aid of its jurisdiction" — the only exception to the flat prohibition against staying proceedings in a state court which would appear to have any possible application.

The short answer is that the record, if any, of the summary eviction proceedings before the magistrate who granted summary eviction is not before us nor has it been tendered. We do not know if the claims asserted here were asserted there and, if so, the reasons for their rejection, whether on the ground of lack of jurisdiction to decide them or some other reason. In passing upon this contention, we are thus confined to an examination of the North Carolina General Statutes.

N.C.Gen.Stat. § 42-26 permits summary ejectment, inter alia, "when a tenant in possession of real estate holds over after his term has expired." The statute would thus seem to confine the issue before the magistrate to the simple question of whether plaintiff was holding over and continuing in possession of demised premises after her term had expired. Section 42-26 also permits summary ejectment for breach of a condition of the lease and for nonpayment of rent. It is significant that the final notice of termination on which the Housing Authority proceeded before the magistrate constituted an exercise of the unlimited power of termination contained in the lease. It did not condition termination on the fact that any covenant of the lease had been breached, or that the rent had not been paid. The case is thus different from Johnson v. Tamsberg, 430 F.2d 1125 (4 Cir., 1970), where the Housing Authority of Charleston did not seek to obtain summary ejection on the basis of the exercise of an unlimited...

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