Stowe v. Bologna

• Decision Date: 04 August 1992
• Docket Number: No. 90-P-578,90-P-578
• Citation: 592 N.E.2d 764,32 Mass.App.Ct. 612
• Parties: Krenie STOWE et al. 1 v. Vincent BOLOGNA et al. 2
• Court: Appeals Court of Massachusetts

Page 764

592 N.E.2d 764

32 Mass.App.Ct. 612

Krenie STOWE et al. ¹ v. Vincent BOLOGNA et al. ²

No. 90-P-578.

Appeals Court of Massachusetts Middlesex.

Argued March 31, 1992.

Decided May 29, 1992.

Further Appellate Review Granted Aug. 4, 1992.

Patrick W. Hanifin, Boston, for defendants.

Mark D. Stern, Somerville, for plaintiffs.

Patricia Cantor, Cambridge, for Rent Control Bd. of Cambridge.

Before KASS, JACOBS and LAURENCE, JJ.

KASS, Justice.

On December 19, 1991, we issued an unpublished memorandum in this appeal affirming the grant, by a judge of the Superior Court, of summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs. See 31 Mass.App.Ct. 1119, 583 N.E.2d 907. In awarding summary judgment for Krenie and Marie Stowe on their claim of rent overcharges, the motion judge had relied upon a decision of the Cambridge rent control board (board), from which no appeal had been taken. We agreed with the judge that the board's decision was entitled to preclusive effect.

On January 21, 1992, the defendants, Vincent Bologna and the 310 Corporation (the landlord), ³ filed an application for rehearing on the ground that, in a decision dated January 18, 1992, ⁴ the board had altered a central factual premise and legal determination of its earlier decision of September 23, 1987, upon which the Superior Court judge had relied. The focal issue on which the board took a different position in 1992 pertained to the use classifications for rent control purposes of the landlord's property at 310 Harvard Street, Cambridge. In 1987, the board had determined that those premises consisted of eight controlled rental units; in 1992, the board determined the premises consisted of five controlled units. As the Stowes had occupied the three units now determined to be exempt from rent control, ⁵ their claim of rent overcharge would be much diminished if the 1992 board decision constituted a retroactive correction of the 1987 decision.

The diction of the findings and recommendations of the board's hearing officer (who was the board's executive director) which led to the 1992 decision spoke in terms of errors having been made in 1987. In light of the apparent about-face of the board, we became concerned that our decision of December 19, 1991, might have worked an injustice against the landlord. We, therefore, granted the landlord's application for rehearing and heard argument on March 31, 1992.

1. Summary of previous opinion. At this point, it is appropriate to summarize our unpublished memorandum of December 19, 1991. The Stowes had complained that their landlord had violated St.1976, c. 36, § 11(a), by charging more rent for the leased premises than permitted by the board. In addition, the Stowes lodged a claim under G.L. c. 186, § 15B(3)(a ), which requires a landlord to hold a security deposit in a separate interest-bearing account in a Massachusetts bank and to provide a receipt and information to the tenants concerning that deposit. A third category of claim involved an asserted violation of G.L. c. 186, § 14, which imposes a minimum sanction of three months' rent for, among other things, interference with furnishing by another of utility services. In this particular case, the complaint was that the landlord had interfered with the telephone installer connecting telephone lines for a subtenant of the plaintiffs. The Superior Court found liability on all three categories claimed and entered an aggregate judgment of $35,991.20, plus $28,019.62 on account of attorneys' fees and expenses, a grand total of $64,010.82.

In terms of dollar consequences, the most serious category of claim was that relating to rent overcharge. Whether there had been an overcharge depended on whether the premises were "controlled" during the period in question and, if "controlled," what the allowable rent was. The Superior Court judge relied on the administrative decision made by the board on September 23, 1987, in which both points had been determined. The landlord sought no judicial review of that administrative determination under the provision of St.1976, c. 36, § 10, as amended by St.1985, c. 399. Accordingly, the decision of the board was in full force at all times when the matter came before the Superior Court judge, and he rightly accepted the board's determination about the status of the premises, including the legal maximum rent. ⁶ In view of its final and unappealed status, the decision of the board concerning the status of the premises was binding upon the Superior Court judge. A final order of an administrative agency in an adjudicatory proceeding, not appealed from and as to which the appeal period has expired, precludes relitigation of the same issues between the same parties, just as would a final judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction. United States v. Utah Constr. & Mining Co., 384 U.S. 394, 421-422, 86 S.Ct. 1545, 1559-1560, 16 L.Ed.2d 642 (1966). Almeida v. Travelers Ins. Co., 383 Mass. 226, 229-230, 418 N.E.2d 602 (1981). Davis, Administrative Law Treatise § 21.2 (2d ed. 1983). ⁷ Once the binding force of the board's 1987 decision was established, it followed that the judge had acted within the discretion conferred upon him by St.1976, c. 36, § 11, when he imposed a sanction of $15,000 on the landlord on account of excess rent charges. Under the statute, the judge could have awarded three times the excess rent charge; the $15,000 was less than double the excess rent.

We need not revisit the discussion in our prior memorandum of the damages awarded on account of the security deposit violation and on account of interference with utilities. The resolution of those issues is unaffected by the point the landlord raises on rehearing. That point is, the board having reexamined and revised its earlier decision, the judgment based thereon should similarly be reexamined and revised.

2. Authority of administrative agency to reopen its proceedings. In the absence of express or perceived statutory limitations, administrative agencies possess an inherent power to reconsider their decisions. Aronson v. Brookline Rent Control Bd., 19 Mass.App.Ct. 700, 703-706, 477 N.E.2d 182 (1985). Turnbladh v. District Ct. of Ramsey County, 259 Minn. 228, 236, 107 N.W.2d 307 (1960). Duvin v. State, 76 N.J. 203, 207, 386 A.2d 842 (1978). Davis, Administrative Law Treatise § 18.09, at 608-611 (1958). Compare Lawrence N. Brandt, Inc. v. Montgomery County Commn. on Landlord-Tenant Affairs, 39 Md.App. 147, 160, 383 A.2d 688 (1978), in which the court limited to the period within which a party could take a timely appeal the power of an agency to reconsider its decision denying a rent adjustment.

That a fraud may have been worked on the administrative agency is among the most compelling reasons for reopening one of its decisions, see Aronson v. Brookline Rent Control Bd., 19 Mass.App.Ct. at 706, 477 N.E.2d 182, and, as we suggested in that case, there will be other occasions to reopen an administrative proceeding, although the power so to do must be sparingly used if administrative decisions are to have resolving force on which persons can rely.

Administrative decisions, even if adjudicatory in the sense that they determine rights and duties of specifically named persons, ⁸ frequently have a regulatory component that may warrant reexamination in the light of changes in regulation, purpose, later decisional law, or applicable on-the-ground facts. See Ramponi v. Selectmen of Weymouth, 26 Mass.App.Ct. 826, 829-830, 533 N.E.2d 226 (1989). The case of 310 Harvard Street is illustrative. What triggered the 1987 proceedings was the very particular and personal dispute between the tenants (the Stowes) of 310 Harvard Street and the landlord--a dispute whose outcome was going to depend on how the board classified the property which the tenant had rented. By 1991, the Stowes had given up their lease and moved elsewhere, and the landlord initiated the proceedings which led to the January 21, 1992, decision.

The landlord did not move to reopen the 1987 case; rather, the landlord brought a new petition (which received a new docket number at the board) to have units three, five, six, and seven declared exempt from rent control as newly-constructed units. ⁹ In initiating the new proceeding, the landlord articulated no purpose to alter any position in relation to the Stowes as former tenants. So far as appeared, the purpose of the 1991 petition was to legitimize the physical alterations the landlord had made and to enable the landlord to charge higher rent than was allowable under the old decision.

There were three other reasons to reexamine the unit composition in the locus from a rent control point of view. First, there had been legislative activity ¹⁰ involving conflicts between the Cambridge zoning ordinance and rent control classifications. Second, in our memorandum of December 19, 1991, we had urged that the board "give some intelligent consideration, free from vengeful wrath, as to what should be done with the locus in the future.... It is unseemly that one branch of the municipal government, i.e., the rent control board, should press for perpetuation of what a city, as a matter of land use planning, has decided is no longer appropriate." ¹¹ Third, our opinion in Zuker v. Cambridge, 29...