Pugh v. Holmes

• Court: Pennsylvania Superior Court
• Writing for the Court: Author: Jacobs
• Citation: Pugh v. Holmes, 253 Pa.Super. 76, 384 A.2d 1234 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1978)
• Decision Date: 13 April 1978
• Parties: J. C. PUGH, Appellee, v. Eloise P. HOLMES, Appellant.

384 A.2d 1234

253 Pa.Super. 76

J. C. PUGH, Appellee, v. Eloise P. HOLMES, Appellant.

Superior Court of Pennsylvania.

April 13, 1978

Argued Sept. 13, 1977. [Copyrighted Material Omitted]

David R. Woodward, Chambersburg, for appellant.

No appearance entered nor brief submitted for appellee.

Before WATKINS, President Judge, and JACOBS, CERCONE, PRICE, VAN der VOORT and SPAETH, JJ.

JACOBS President Judge:

This appeal presents an issue important to the application of landlord-tenant law. Appellant Mrs. Holmes requests that Pennsylvania join the growing number of jurisdictions which have abolished the principle of caveat emptor (or caveat lessee ) and applied the doctrine of implied warranty of habitability to landlord-tenant relationships. ^[1] For the reasons stated below, we hold that caveat emptor is no longer applicable to residential leases and that an implied warranty of habitability will apply to all such leases.

Appellant has rented a residential dwelling in Chambersburg, Franklin County, from appellee since November, 1971. The rental is based on a month-to-month oral lease and the rent is sixty dollars monthly. The only income appellant and her two minor children receive is $294 in monthly public assistance payments.

In April 1976, appellee filed an assumpsit action against appellant before a justice of the peace alleging that appellant had failed to pay her rent from September, 1975, through April, 1976. Appellee obtained a judgment and appellant filed a notice of appeal with the Court of Common Pleas of Franklin County. Appellee then filed a complaint requesting judgment for unpaid rent in the amount of $576. In August, 1976, appellee filed a second action against appellant before the justice of the peace and obtained a judgment for possession and for unpaid rent. Appellant again appealed to the Court of Common Pleas and appellee filed a complaint seeking possession and unpaid rent.

Appellant filed an Answer Containing New Matter to both complaints in which she raised a breach of the implied warranty of habitability as a defense. In support of her answer, appellant alleged that since September, 1975, appellee failed to maintain her dwelling "in a safe, sanitary, and healthful condition fit for human habitation." She listed ten specific factors, including a leaking roof, lack of hot water, leaking pipes, infestation by cockroaches, and hazardous steps and floors, as examples of the uninhabitable condition of her rental premises. She also alleged that she had notified appellee of these defective conditions and that he did not repair them. On the basis of this implied warranty defense, appellant argued that her obligation to pay rent to appellee had been relieved and that she was neither responsible for the past rent nor should she have to relinquish possession of the dwelling.

Appellant also denied that the total rent for May, 1976, was due because, after notifying appellee of a broken lock on her front door and giving him a reasonable opportunity to repair it, she replaced the lock herself at a cost of six dollars. The six dollars, she stated, should be deducted from the rent claimed as past due. Finally, appellant asserted a counterclaim for twenty-five dollars for the cost of repairing several other defective conditions of which she had given appellee notice, but which he did not correct.

Appellee entered preliminary objections in the nature of a demurrer both to appellant's request that her rental obligation be abated and to the counterclaim for repair costs. The lower court sustained appellee's preliminary objections and appellant brought this appeal. During the pendency of this appeal, appellant has been depositing forty-five dollars monthly into an escrow account.

Landlord-tenant law traditionally has been controlled by the common law. The origins of the doctrine caveat emptor stem back to the sixteenth century when landlord-tenant relationships developed in a primarily agrarian society. ^[2] Leases were treated as conveyances and tenants rented the land surrounding their dwellings, with the dwellings themselves regarded as little more than appendages to the land. ". . . (T)he governing idea (was) that the land (was) bound to pay the rent," that is, rent issued out of the land, not from the dwelling or the tenant. Pollock and Maitland, The History of English Law, II, 130-131 (1909).

Because the focal point of early landlord-tenant relationships was the land itself, little attention was paid to the dwelling situated on the land. The landlord had no obligations to the tenant other than those made expressly, and the tenant's obligation to pay rent was independent of the landlord's obligation to maintain a habitable dwelling for the tenant. The doctrine of caveat emptor was fully applicable. The tenant's only protections were to inspect the premises before taking possession or to extract express warranties from the landlord. It was assumed that landlords and tenants held equal bargaining power in arranging their rental agreements, and that the agrarian tenant had the ability to inspect the dwelling adequately and to make simple repairs in the buildings which possessed no modern conveniences such as indoor plumbing or electrical wiring.

As agrarian society declined and population centers shifted from rural to urban areas, the common law concepts of landlord-tenant relationships did not change. Despite the facts that the primary purpose of the urban leasing arrangement was housing and not land and that the tenant could neither adequately inspect nor repair urban dwelling units, landlords still were not held to any implied warranties in the places they rented and tenants leased dwellings at their own risk.

In some instances, the courts created exceptions to the common law landlord-tenant rules in order to alleviate the law's harshness. For example, the Massachusetts Court implied a warranty of fitness for immediate use as applicable to furnished dwellings rented for short time periods. Ingalls v. Hobbs, 156 Mass. 348, 31 N.E. 286 (1892). A landlord's fraud on the tenant and the legal fiction of constructive eviction also have been applied as exceptions to the doctrine of caveat emptor. See, Lemle v. Breeden, 51 Haw. 426, 429, 462 P.2d 470, 472 (1969), reh. denied 51 Haw. 478 (1969); King v. Moorehead, 495 S.W.2d 65, 69-70 (Mo.App., 1973).

These exceptions, however, have proved inadequate to protect many tenants. Most rental units are neither furnished nor leased for short periods of time. Constructive eviction requires that a tenant vacate the leasehold, a difficult, if not impossible, requirement in times of low cost housing shortages. And, fraud by a landlord is not easily proved. For these reasons, the courts in many jurisdictions have explicitly rejected the applicability of caveat emptor and have implied a warranty of habitability and fitness for use of the premises. ^[3] Those courts which have abolished caveat lessee in favor of an implied warranty of habitability have all made a similar finding: the tenant is no longer interested in renting land, but rather a dwelling house fit for habitation. As the Court in Javins v. First National Realty Corporation stated,

When American city dwellers, both rich and poor, seek 'shelter' today, they seek a wellknown package of goods and services (footnote omitted) a package which includes not merely walls and ceilings, but also adequate heat, light and ventilation, serviceable plumbing facilities, secure windows and door, proper sanitation, and proper maintenance.

138 U.S.App.D.C. 369, 372, 428 F.2d 1071, 1074 (1970), cert. denied, 400 U.S. 925, 91 S.Ct. 186, 27 L.Ed.2d 185 (1970). Gone are the days of equal bargaining power between landlord and tenant. In both rural and urban areas, housing, especially low cost housing, is scarce. A landlord may offer a dwelling, regardless of its condition to a tenant on an "as is" basis, knowing that if the tenant declines to accept the premises, several others who need housing just as badly will be waiting to take the property. Today's tenant can neither adequately inspect nor repair dwellings. Furthermore, at least one court has found that the continued letting of "tumbledown" houses is ". . . a contributing cause of such problems as urban blight, juvenile delinquency and high property taxes for conscientious landowners." Pines v. Perssion, 14 Wis.2d 590, 596, 111 N.W.2d 409, 413 (1961).

The jurisdictions which have addressed the issue, then, have uniformly decided that the tenant must be afforded more protection than he or she has been given at common law. For that reason, courts have rejected caveat emptor and have adopted the doctrine of an implied warranty of habitability ". . . as the most appropriate way to restore a fair and balanced relationship between landlords and residential tenants and to encourage the decent maintenance of our residential housing supply." Morbeth Realty Corp. v. Velez, 73 Misc.2d 996, 999, 343 N.Y.S.2d 406, 410 (1973).

It is time for Pennsylvania to join the trend toward the implied warranty of habitability. To do so will not be a complete and sudden break with the past, but only the next step in the law which has been developing in the Commonwealth for a number of years. The Pennsylvania courts have long provided remedies for tenants whose landlords breach express covenants in their leases. McDanel v. Mack Realty Company, 315 Pa. 174, 172 A. 97 (1934); Gorman v. Miller, 27 Pa.Super. 62 (1905). Consumers have been protected in the buying of goods by implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose since the 1950's. The Act of April 6, 1953, P.L 3, § 2-314 and § 2-315, as reenacted, Act of Oct. 2, 1959, P.L. 1023, § 2, 12A P.S. § 2-314 and § 2-315 (197...