Pearson v. Dist. of Columbia Rental Hous. Comm'n
| Decision Date | 03 March 2022 |
| Docket Number | 20-AA-351 |
| Court | D.C. Court of Appeals |
| Parties | Roy L. Pearson, Jr., Petitioner, v. District of Columbia Rental Housing Commission, Respondent, and Gardenia Brown, Intervenor. |
Submitted February 11, 2021
Petition for Review of Orders of the District of Columbia Rental Housing Commission (RH-TP-14-30, 482, 14-30, 555)
Roy L Pearson, Jr., pro se.
Karl A. Racine, Attorney General for the District of Columbia Loren L. AliKhan, Solicitor General at the time the statement was filed, Caroline S. Van Zile, Principal Deputy Solicitor General, Carl J. Schifferle, Deputy Solicitor General, and Richard S. Love, Senior Assistant Attorney General, filed a statement in lieu of brief.
Dorene Haney for intervenor.
Before Easterly, McLeese, and Deahl, Associate Judges.
Petitioner Roy L. Pearson, Jr. filed administrative petitions against his landlord, intervenor Gardenia Brown. Mr. Pearson seeks review of decisions of the District of Columbia Rental Housing Commission (RHC) granting him some but not all of the relief he sought. Mr. Pearson argues that the RHC erroneously affirmed decisions of the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) (1) limiting Mr. Pearson's damages to rent amounts illegally demanded within three years of the filing of his petitions; (2) declining to award treble damages; and (3) refusing to permit additional evidence of damages that accrued after the close of an evidentiary hearing. We affirm.
Unless otherwise noted, the following appears to be undisputed. Mr. Pearson began renting from Ms. Brown in 1999, at a monthly rate of $585. Although Ms. Brown had previously claimed an exemption from the rent-control statute, she did not provide Mr. Pearson with a copy of the exemption form at the beginning of his tenancy. In 2010, Ms. Brown filed a new claim of exemption, which she also did not provide to Mr. Pearson. During the rental period, Ms. Brown raised the rent multiple times. In 2014, Mr. Pearson filed petitions asserting, among other things, that Ms. Brown did not have a valid claim of exemption from the rent-control provisions of the Rental Housing Act of 1985 (RHA), D.C. Code § 42-3501.01 et seq. (2020 Repl.), and that Ms. Brown had failed to comply with the RHA's rent-control provisions when raising Mr. Pearson's rent.
An Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) held an evidentiary hearing. At the evidentiary hearing, Mr. Pearson asked that the record be kept open until right before the ALJ ruled, so that Mr. Pearson could provide proof of additional damages resulting from Ms. Brown's continuing illegal rent demands. The ALJ denied that request. Mr. Pearson subsequently renewed the request, which was again denied. In denying the request, the ALJ explained that Mr. Pearson could file a new petition to prove damages that occurred after the date of the evidentiary hearing. The ALJ also stated that Mr. Pearson had been given the opportunity to amend his pending petitions to add claims relating to continued illegal rent demands, but Mr. Pearson had declined to do so.
On the merits, the ALJ determined that Ms. Brown's claim of exemption from rent control was void ab initio, because Ms. Brown did not provide Mr. Pearson with notice of her exemption from rent control at the beginning of his tenancy or when she filed for another exemption in 2010. Accordingly, the ALJ found that all rent increases Ms. Brown took or demanded were invalid. The ALJ determined, however, that the RHA's statute of limitations (D.C. Code § 42-3502.06(e) (2020 Repl.)) prevented Mr. Pearson from obtaining relief with respect to rent increases occurring more than three years before Mr. Pearson filed his petitions. Because Mr. Pearson's monthly rent at the time he filed his petitions was $949, the ALJ (1) ordered Ms. Brown to refund Mr. Pearson any rent over that amount that Ms. Brown had demanded during the three years before Mr. Pearson's petitions; and (2) reduced Mr. Pearson's monthly rent to $949 until Ms. Brown took a legal rent increase. The ALJ declined to order award treble damages, concluding that Ms. Brown had not acted in bad faith.
The RHC affirmed.
This court will not disturb [the] RHC's factual findings unless they are unsupported by substantial evidence in the record. We also give considerable deference to the RHC's interpretation of the statutes it administers and the regulations it promulgates[, and] we will sustain the RHC's interpretation of those statutes and regulations unless it is unreasonable or embodies a material misconception of the law, even if a different interpretation also may be supportable. We are the final arbiter of the meaning of our case law, but to the extent that the RHC has used our case law to assist it in interpreting ambiguities in the RHA and implementing regulations, we continue to defer to the RHC in its exercise of statutory interpretation.
United Dominion Mgmt. Co. v. District of Columbia Rental Hous. Comm'n, 101 A.3d 426, 429 (D.C. 2014) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).
Mr. Pearson argues that he should have been awarded damages in the amount of all rent that Ms. Brown demanded during Mr. Pearson's entire tenancy. Mr. Pearson's theory in support of that argument is that Ms. Brown never validly requested exemption from rent control during Mr. Pearson's tenancy; all of Ms. Brown's demands for rent therefore were unlawful; and the lawful monthly rent therefore was $0. The RHC did not accept that argument, concluding, among other things, that Mr. Pearson had not timely presented the argument to the ALJ. We uphold the RHC's timeliness ruling.
Mr. Pearson initially sought damages in the amount of all rents demanded above $585 per month, which was the rental amount at the beginning of his tenancy. It appears that Mr. Pearson did not explicitly indicate that he was seeking damages in the amount of all of the demanded rent until (at the earliest) March 2016, which was over two years after he filed his petition and over seventeen months after the ALJ held an evidentiary hearing and closed the record in the case.
Mr. Pearson argues that he did timely raise the issue before the ALJ, in the initial petition and in filings in March and August of 2014. We disagree. In none of those filings did Mr. Pearson explicitly indicate that he was claiming that the lawful monthly rent was $0. To the contrary, Mr. Pearson's petition requested that the lawful monthly rent be determined to be $585, and his August 2014 pre-hearing filing made the same request. The March 2014 filing was a motion to compel discovery, and it raised the possibility that the lawful monthly rent might be lower than $585. That discovery motion was granted in part and denied in part, and Mr. Pearson has not challenged that ruling in this court. Thereafter, Mr. Pearson continued to argue that the lawful monthly rent should be $585.
Given those circumstances, we see no basis to overturn the RHC's conclusion that Mr. Pearson did not properly preserve his contention that the lawful monthly rent was $0. "In the absence of exceptional circumstances, a reviewing court will refuse to consider contentions not presented before the administrative agency at the appropriate time." Goodman v. District of Columbia Rental Hous. Comm'n, 573 A.2d 1293, 1301 (D.C. 1990). We see no such exceptional circumstances here.
Mr. Pearson argues that the RHC erred by limiting his damages to rent increases unlawfully demanded within three years of the filing of Mr. Pearson's petitions. We uphold the ruling of the RHC.
D.C. Code § 42-3502.06(e) provides in pertinent part that a The RHC ruled that Mr. Pearson was precluded by this provision from challenging rent increases that occurred more than three years before the filing of his petitions, because the term "effective date" means the date on which a rent increase is implemented, whether or not the landlord had properly claimed exemption from rent control.
The RHC's ruling finds substantial support in our decision in United Dominion, 101 A.3d at 431-33. In that case, this court upheld the RHC's determination that, for purposes of the RHA's statute of limitations, the effective date of a rent adjustment is "the date on which a landlord issues a notice to the tenant that it is increasing the rent charged," even if the increase was not legally permissible at the time the tenant was notified. Id. at 431. In our view, the RHC's decision in this case is a reasonable application of the principle upheld in United Dominion.
We are not persuaded by Mr. Pearson's arguments to the contrary. First, Mr. Pearson argues that unlawful rent increases cannot properly be viewed as "rent adjustments" within the meaning of § 42-3502.06(e). That argument, however, is flatly inconsistent with the holding of United Dominion.
Second Mr. Pearson argues that this case is different from United Dominion, because the RHC in this case determined that Ms. Brown's claim of exemption from rent control was void ab initio, whereas United Dominion involved untimely registration of rent-ceiling increases. We do not agree that this difference required the RHC to permit Mr. Pearson to recover damages for rent that was demanded more than three years before Mr. Pearson's petitions. It is true that items deemed to be void ab initio are often treated as if they never existed. E.g., Wagshal v. Selig, 403 A.2d 338, 341 (D.C. 1979). That is not a flat rule, however. See, e.g., Brown v. M St. Five, LLC, 56 A.3d 765, 779 (D.C...
To continue reading
Request your trial