Case ID: a2d_102/html/0310-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "PER CURIAM.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

CLARK v. COZIAHR et al.
    No. 1417.
    Municipal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
    Argued Jan. 11, 1954
    Decided Jan. 22, 1954
    Leonard R. Snyder, .Washington, D. C., with whom Leonard S. Melrod, .Washington, D. C., was on the brief, for appellant.
    S. Benjamin Cohen, Washington, D. C., entered an appearance for appellees.
    Before CAYTON, Chief Judge, and HOOD and QUINN, Associate Judges.
   PER CURIAM.

In a suit for overcharges of rent for an apartment, brought under the District of Columbia Emergency Rent Control Act, the trial court awarded judgment to the tenant-plaintiffs.

Landlord appeals and contends that the court should have ruled as a matter of law that the amount collected in excess of the legal ceiling covered an agreed charge for the use of parking space. The period involved was forty-six weeks. The evidence was that for forty-three of those weeks the landlord collected rent in excess of the maximum ceiling; and as to that period there was no semblance of a defense. As to the remaining three-week period, receipts were issued containing the words “including parking lot.” Whether for that brief period a new and separate agreement had been reached, or whether the landlord continued to exact an overcharge in the new guise of a parking charge, was a question of fact.

Affirmed. 
      
      . Code 1951, 45-1601 et seq. (The Act expired July 31, 1953, but there is no question that the right to sue on this type of claim has survived.)