Connelly v. Housing Authority of City of New Haven

• Decision Date: 02 January 1990
• Docket Number: No. 13738,13738
• Citation: 213 Conn. 354,567 A.2d 1212
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: Thelma CONNELLY et al. v. HOUSING AUTHORITY OF the CITY OF NEW HAVEN.

Page 1212

567 A.2d 1212

213 Conn. 354

Thelma CONNELLY et al. v. HOUSING AUTHORITY OF the CITY OF NEW HAVEN.

No. 13738.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued Nov. 7, 1989.

Decided Jan. 2, 1990.

Alice Bauer, with whom were Shelley A. White, Hartford, and, on the brief, Jon Alander, for appellants (plaintiffs).

Frank Cochran, New Haven, with whom was Edmund Winterbottom, for appellee (defendant).

Clarine Nardi Riddle, Atty. Gen., and Robert M. Langer and Stephen R. Park, Asst. Attys. Gen., filed a brief for the State of Conn. as amicus curiae.

Before PETERS, C.J., and SHEA, CALLAHAN, GLASS and COVELLO, JJ.

COVELLO, Associate Justice.

This is an appeal from the decision of the trial court, DeMayo, J., which granted summary judgment in favor of the defendant housing authority of the city of New Haven (housing authority). The dispositive issue is whether a municipal housing authority, acting as landlord, may be held liable for violations of the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practice Act (CUTPA), General Statutes §§ 42-110a et seq. We hold that the acts of municipal housing authorities are exempt from the operation of CUTPA and that the trial court did not err in granting summary judgment in favor of the defendant.

The relevant facts are undisputed. On December 10, 1981, six low income tenants of the Elm Haven Extension apartments (Elm Haven) ¹ filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of all the tenants of Elm Haven against the defendant, which owns and operates these federally subsidized low income apartments. ² The plaintiffs alleged that the defendant had violated state law by not providing adequate heat and hot water to its tenants due to faulty boilers, plumbing, pumps and heating systems in the apartment buildings. ³ The plaintiffs alleged that as a result they had been subjected, during the period from November 1, 1981, through March 31, 1982, to various health risks arising from the defendant's "continuing to rent out apartments to the plaintiffs which lack[ed] adequate and or stable heat and hot water" supplies.

The plaintiffs sought injunctive relief and damages in two counts. The first count alleged that the defendant's failure to provide adequate heat and hot water to the Elm Haven tenants violated the obligations imposed upon landlords by General Statutes § 47a-7 ⁴ and by the municipal housing code. ⁵ The second count alleged that the defendant's actions constituted unfair and deceptive trade practices in violation of CUTPA.

On December 22, 1981, after a hearing on the plaintiffs' motion for a temporary injunction, the trial court, Foti, J., issued an injunction enjoining the defendant from failing to make repairs to the Elm Haven heating systems, and ordering the defendant to make immediate repairs in order to restore adequate and uniform supplies of heat to the plaintiffs' apartments. On February 10, 1982, the trial court denied the defendant's motion to strike the second count of the complaint. The court rejected the defendant's claim that, as a municipal housing authority, it was exempt from liability for its actions under CUTPA, and, in the alternative, that none of the acts and practices alleged in the complaint were unfair or deceptive within the meaning of CUTPA.

On November 13, 1987, the defendant filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings, or in the alternative, for summary judgment, on the ground that CUTPA does not apply to the providing of essential services to tenants by municipal housing authorities. The trial court, DeMayo, J., granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment on the ground alleged herein. The trial court held that municipal housing authorities are exempt from CUTPA under General Statutes § 42-110c ⁶ and were excluded from CUTPA as they do not engage in trade or commerce within the meaning of the act. The court further held that under Russell v. Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc., 200 Conn. 172, 510 A.2d 972 (1986), the defendant is not liable under CUTPA because municipal housing authorities are regulated under the Landlord and Tenant Act, General Statutes § 47a-1 et seq., and because the Code of Federal Regulations is silent on whether municipal housing authorities' transactions are the subject of Federal Trade Commission action.

On April 3, 1989, the plaintiffs filed this appeal with the Appellate Court. We thereafter transferred this appeal to ourselves pursuant to Practice Book § 4023.

The plaintiffs' claims for damages in count two of their complaint fail because they are premised solely on CUTPA. Even if it is assumed, arguendo, that the defendant is engaged in "trade" or "commerce" as defined by that act, the defendant nonetheless is exempted from CUTPA scrutiny because, as a municipal housing authority regulated by the United States department of housing and urban development (HUD), its actions fall within the ambit of General Statutes § 42-110c. Section 42-110c provides in relevant part: "EXCEPTIONS: (a) Nothing in this chapter shall apply to: (1) Transactions or actions otherwise permitted under law as administered by any regulatory board or officer acting under statutory authority of the state or of the United States...."

In the present case, the "transactions or actions otherwise permitted under law" are the continued leasing or renting of subsidized apartments to low income tenants. ⁷ In Conaway v. Prestia, 191 Conn. 484, 491, 464 A.2d 847 (1983), we ruled that the leasing or renting of apartment or dwelling units fell within the purview of CUTPA. See also Daddona v. Liberty Mobile Home Sales, Inc., 209 Conn. 243, 255, 258-59, 550 A.2d 1061 (1988); Eamiello v. Liberty Mobile Home Sales, Inc., 208 Conn. 620, 648, 652-56, 546 A.2d 805 (1988). In the present case, however, the actions of the defendant, a creature of statute, are expressly authorized and pervasively regulated by both the state department of housing and HUD. As such, the plain language of § 42-110c exempts the leasing or renting of apartments by the defendant from CUTPA scrutiny. Clear and unequivocal statutes cannot be extended beyond their plain meaning. See General Statutes § 1-1(a); Ganim v. Roberts, 204 Conn. 760, 763, 529 A.2d 194 (1987); State v. Pellegrino, 194 Conn. 279, 284, 480 A.2d 537 (1984); Waterbury Petroleum Products, Inc. v. Canaan Oil & Fuel Co., 193 Conn. 208, 231, 477 A.2d 988 (1984).

In Russell v. Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc., supra, we held that CUTPA was not applicable to the sale of securities because such transactions are: (1) explicitly subject to a different and specifically applicable statutory remedy; and (2) they were not among the types of transactions to which the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC Act) has been applied. Id., 200 Conn. at 175-84, 510 A.2d 972.

The transactions of this defendant clearly fall within the rationale of Russell. The defendant is subject to pervasive state regulation pursuant to the provisions of chapter 128 of the General Statutes governing municipal housing projects; § 8-38 et seq.; and to pervasive federal regulation pursuant to the relevant provisions of the United States Housing Act of 1937, 42 U.S.C. § 1437 et seq., and its implementing regulations in title 24 of the Code of Federal Regulations. The state statute and the federal regulations set forth in great detail the municipal landlord's responsibilities and provide carefully balanced procedural and substantive remedies for public housing tenants in a variety of situations. ⁸ These specific statutory remedies carefully balance the rights and obligations of municipal housing authorities and their tenants, and prescribe specific procedures designed to implement repair or rehabilitation of dwellings. None of these specific statutory provisions makes reference to CUTPA. The carefully crafted equilibrium between the competing interests of municipal housing authorities and public housing tenants embodied in title 8 and the HUD regulations would be upset by holding that a CUTPA remedy, lacking the procedural prerequisites and specifically tailored remedies of either § 8-38 et seq. or the federal regulations applies in addition to those remedies.

Further, as we noted in Russell v. Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc., supra, at 179-80, 510 A.2d 972, the history of the FTC Act is the lodestar for determining the scope of CUTPA. After a review of cases decided under the FTC Act over its seventy-five year history, and of the standards and statements of the FTC, we were unable to discover any instance in which that act has been applied to any act or practice of a local public agency, including a housing authority. We also failed to discover any instance in which the FTC Act has been applied to any landlord because of the breakdown of heat or hot water delivery systems. ⁹ In FTC v. Colgate-Palmolive Co., 380 U.S. 374, 85 S.Ct. 1035, 13 L.Ed.2d 904 (1965), the United States Supreme Court discussed the history and proper role of the FTC Act, and the issues approximating those pleaded in the present case are conspicuously absent. See Ivey, Barnum & O'Mara v. Indian Harbor Properties, Inc., 190 Conn. 528, 533-36, 539-40, 461 A.2d 1369 (1983). The trial court was correct when it determined that under the Russell rationale, CUTPA did not apply.

Summary judgment is appropriate when all the documents submitted demonstrate that there is no genuine issue of material fact remaining between the parties and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Practice Book § 384; Burns v. Hartford Hospital, 192 Conn. 451, 455, 472 A.2d 1257 (1984); Bartha v. Waterbury House Wrecking Co., 190 Conn. 8, 11, 459 A.2d 115 (1983). The test is whether a party would be entitled to a directed verdict on the same facts. State v. Goggin, 208 Conn. 606, 616, 546 A.2d 250 (1988); Batick v. Seymour, 186 Conn. 632, 647, 443 A.2d 471 (1982).

There is no material fact in dispute. Whether the defendant is subject to CUTPA is a question of law, not fact. See Cahill v. Board of Education, 198...