West v. Village of Morrisville

• Decision Date: 28 April 1983
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 81-8.
• Citation: 563 F. Supp. 1101
• Parties: Edith WEST, Nathan Barbour and Jane Barbour v. VILLAGE OF MORRISVILLE and Robert Bourne, Richard Hill, Dayton Wakefield, Howard Morse, Bruno Loati, individually and collectively as its Water and Light Commissioners and Richard Sargent, Mary Kuntsman, Duane Sprague, Andrew Jensvold, Richard Shanley, individually and collectively as its Board of Trustees and Robert Page, its Water and Light Superintendent and William Pickens, its Water and Light Assistant Superintendent and C.R. Whittier, its Agent and Tax Collector.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Vermont

563 F. Supp. 1101

Edith WEST, Nathan Barbour and Jane Barbour v. VILLAGE OF MORRISVILLE and Robert Bourne, Richard Hill, Dayton Wakefield, Howard Morse, Bruno Loati, individually and collectively as its Water and Light Commissioners and Richard Sargent, Mary Kuntsman, Duane Sprague, Andrew Jensvold, Richard Shanley, individually and collectively as its Board of Trustees and Robert Page, its Water and Light Superintendent and William Pickens, its Water and Light Assistant Superintendent and C.R. Whittier, its Agent and Tax Collector.

Civ. A. No. 81-8.

United States District Court, D. Vermont.

April 28, 1983.

Gary H. Barnes, Downs, Rachlin & Martin, Burlington, Vt., for plaintiffs.

Mary Ellen Clerkin, Paul, Frank & Collins, Burlington, Vt., for defendants.

COFFRIN, Chief Judge.

This action is before the court on cross motions for summary judgment. Plaintiffs have alleged violation of their rights to due process and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution caused by defendants' practice of seeking payment from property owners for delinquent electric charges incurred by tenants.¹ In addition to their constitutional claims, plaintiffs have asserted other defenses to payment which we consider to be in the nature of pendent claims. The parties have entered into an extensive stipulation of facts so we need not set forth the factual background. In general terms, the controversy is over the right of the defendant Village of Morrisville Water & Light Department to hold the plaintiffs, who are landlords and property owners, liable for charges from electric service provided to plaintiffs' tenants at the tenants' requests and in the tenants' names. We will first discuss the constitutional claims advanced by all plaintiffs and then address the pendent issues, which do not apply to all of the plaintiffs equally.

Discussion

As a preliminary matter we must address defendants' argument that the action should be dismissed for failure to exhaust administrative remedies. The doctrine of exhaustion does not apply here because the action was brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. In the landmark decision of Patsy v. Board of Regents, 457 U.S. 496, 102 S.Ct. 2557, 73 L.Ed.2d 172 (1982), the United States Supreme Court held that, consistent with congressional intent, exhaustion of administrative remedies is not required under section 1983. The Court acknowledged limited exceptions to the no-exhaustion rule where the claims advanced under section 1983 were in pari materia with statutory claims for which Congress intended there to be comprehensive administrative remedies, but such is not the case here. We conclude that this action falls squarely within the no-exhaustion rule of Patsy.

Constitutional Claims

Plaintiffs argue that, by holding them liable for the delinquent electric bills of their tenants, the department is arbitrarily and capriciously depriving them of property in violation of substantive due process. The parties do not dispute that the defendants' practices constitute state action for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment. There is also no question that the threatened sale of the plaintiffs' property in satisfaction of the purported liens would, if realized, be a deprivation of property sufficient to invoke the constitutional protections sought. The parties' contentions center around the question whether the contemplated deprivations violate plaintiffs' right to substantive due process.

Plaintiffs cite us to numerous cases, but principally rely upon the reasoning of Davis v. Weir, 497 F.2d 139 (5th Cir.1974), and those cases which follow it. Sterling v. Village of Maywood, 579 F.2d 1350 (7th Cir.1978); Craft v. Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division, 534 F.2d 684 (6th Cir.1976); Koger v. Guarino, 412 F.Supp. 1375 (E.D. Pa.1976). Some of those cases were decided exclusively on equal protection grounds. Some, like Davis, touched on both equal protection and substantive due process. All shared the characteristics that the plaintiffs were tenants whose right to service, either original or continued, was conditioned upon payment of delinquent accounts. The charges on these delinquent accounts were incurred variously in the names of either the owners of the premises or the prior occupants. In each case the reviewing court found that the imposition of such a condition was unconstitutional. While we have no quarrel with the reasoning or outcome of these cases, whether decided upon equal protection or due process grounds, we believe that the instant case presents a significantly different situation.

The difference between the cases cited by plaintiff and the instant case was highlighted by the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit only six years after it decided Davis. In Chatham v. Jackson, 613 F.2d 73 (5th Cir.1980), an action by a property owner to enjoin the defendant city water department from terminating the water supply to an apartment building because of unpaid delinquent charges incurred by a tenant, the Fifth Circuit Court was again asked to consider the constitutionality of imposing liability upon a third party for delinquent utility charges. In upholding the constitutionality of the city's action, the court understandably devoted the bulk of its opinion to distinguishing the facts of Chatham from those presented in Davis. Two major considerations underlay the Chatham court's effort at drawing a distinction. First, there had been an intervening opinion by the Georgia Supreme Court reaffirming the validity of statutorily created liens on real property arising because of delinquent utility charges, and authorizing enforcement of those liens by refusal to provide service to subsequent owners of the property. Chatham, 613 F.2d at 76 (citing Bowery Savings Bank v. DeKalb County, 240 Ga. 528, 242 S.E.2d 50 (1978)). Second, the court identified certain constitutional and policy-based asymmetries in the relative status of landlords and tenants. Chatham, 613 F.2d at 76. With respect to the first distinction, the Chatham court found that the existence of a statute or ordinance authorizing the lien created a sufficient legal basis for withholding service and concluded: "We can imagine many valid reasons for the city's practice, and we do not find it arbitrary to coerce an owner into paying for service that benefitted his property." Id. at 78. The latter part of this conclusion summarizes the second basis for the court's distinction of Davis. The Chatham court observed that the benefit to a tenant from utility service is purely personal while the landlord's benefit derives from his ownership of the serviced property whose value is enhanced. Id. at 80. Reasoning from this distinction, the court observed that "it is eminently reasonable for the city to impose a lien and threaten to terminate service to the benefitted property when the service is not paid for. The City's practice seems to be closely related to its objective of dispensing benefits to property only upon payment of proper compensation." Id.

Finally, the court buttressed its conclusion by reference to Dunbar v. City of New York, 251 U.S. 516, 40 S.Ct. 250, 64 L.Ed. 384 (1920), in which the United States Supreme Court held that imposition and enforcement of liens against the property of a landlord for the unpaid water bills of her tenant did not violate the landlord's substantive due process rights. Chatham, 613 F.2d at 81. For reasons we will discuss we conclude that the instant case falls within the pattern addressed by the circuit court in Chatham, the reasoning and holding of which we find persuasive. We therefore find Davis distinguishable on the same grounds as did the Chatham court.

As in Chatham, defendants in this case proceeded pursuant to a statutorily authorized lien. Plaintiff raised several objections to the conclusion that the charter of the Village of Morrisville authorizes such a lien, most of which are answered by the Vermont Supreme Court in Rand v. Marshall, 84 Vt. 161, 78 A. 790 (1911). In that case, the Vermont court upheld enforcement of a lien authorized by a similar provision in the charter of the Village of Hardwick.² In doing so, the court considered a number of factors including: that the lessor requested the installation of service; that the parties acted in the expectation that electricity would be used on the premises; that the Village was not obligated to supply electricity to its residents; and that "the owner can protect himself from liability at any time by directing that no electricity be furnished." Id. at 165, 78 A. 790. Plaintiffs seek to distinguish Rand on the basis of this last factor, which concededly is not present in the instant case. Aside from pointing out that this is only one of the factors listed by the court in Rand, we note that this issue is disposed of in the Dunbar case in which the landlord disclaimed responsibility for water service and the parties covenanted in the lease that the tenant would obtain service in its own name. Dunbar, 251 U.S. at 517, 40 S.Ct. at 250-251. There was no showing that the landlord could have caused service to be terminated. The United States Supreme Court held that, despite the agreement between the parties, the preexisting charter provision authorizing a lien warranted a finding that the landlord had impliedly consented to the provision of service and that the challenged lien was valid. Id. at 517-18, 40 S.Ct. at 250-251.³

Plaintiffs also advance a somewhat technical statutory construction argument, seeking to distinguish the Rand opinion and the Hardwick charter from the Morrisville charter because the Hardwick charter authorizes liens for both rates and rents, while the Morrisville charter apparently only authorizes liens for rents. Plaintiffs argue that rates and rents have specific technical meanings in the present context, and that the charges in the present case are rates. This argument ignores the apparent interchangeability with...