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DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COURT OF APPEALS

No. 22-CV-0403

JAMILA WEATHERLY, APPELLANT,

V.

SECOND NORTHWEST COOPERATIVE HOMES ASSOCIATION, INC., APPELLEE.

Appeal from the Superior Court

of the District of Columbia

(2022-LTB-000111)

(Hon. Heide Herrmann, Trial Judge;

(Hon. Todd E. Edelman, Reviewing Judge)

(Submitted April 26, 2023 Decided October 31, 2023*) 

Robert Maxwell was on the brief for appellant.

Daniel Costello and Jessica S. Blumberg were on the brief for appellee.

Before BECKWITH and DEAHL, Associate Judges, and GLICKMAN, Senior 

Judge.

GLICKMAN, Senior Judge: Jamila Weatherly appeals from a nonredeemable 

judgment for possession of a rental unit in which she has been residing. The unit is

 

* The decision in this case was originally issued as an unpublished 

Memorandum Opinion and Judgment. It is now being published upon the court’s 

grant of appellee’s motion to publish.
2

owned by appellee Second Northwest Cooperative Homes Association, Inc. 

(“Second Northwest”). The judgment was rendered after trial by Magistrate Judge 

Herrmann and was affirmed on review by Judge Edelman. Essentially for the 

reasons stated by Judge Edelman in his written order filed on May 27, 2022, we 

affirm the judgment.1

 

1 Appellant filed her notice of appeal in this case on May 30, 2022. 

Nonetheless, on that same date, appellant also filed a motion on behalf of the Estate 

of Norma D. Weatherly to intervene in the Superior Court proceedings. Thereafter, 

appellant moved the Superior Court to stay the enforcement of the nonredeemable 

judgment of possession pending appeal. On July 1, 2022, Magistrate Judge Rahkel 

Bouchet granted both motions. Second Northwest then filed a motion for review of 

those rulings. On December 9, 2022, Judge Edelman issued an order denying the 

motion for review. In addition, although the instant appeal was still pending in this 

court and we had not remanded the case or the record to Superior Court for any 

purpose, Judge Edelman purported to vacate the judgment that was appealed to this 

court on May 30, 2022, and that is now before us on appeal. No appeal was taken 

from the judge’s December 9, 2022, order. We called for supplemental briefing to 

address, inter alia, whether Judge Edelman had jurisdiction to vacate the judgment 

on appeal. We have received and considered the parties’ supplemental briefs.

We hold that the Superior Court did not have jurisdiction to vacate the 

judgment of possession when it did, and that the judgment therefore remains in 

effect. “A party who has taken an appeal generally has no right to seek a reopening 

of a trial court’s judgment, and the trial court lost jurisdiction over the ruling” on 

appeal. Padgett v. Padgett, 478 A.2d 1098, 1099-1100 (D.C. 1984) (internal citation 

omitted); see also In re Estate of Derricotte, 885 A.2d 320, 326 (D.C. 2005) (“A 

timely filed appeal divests the trial court of jurisdiction.”); De Foe v. Weaver Bros., 

108 A.2d 94, 95 (D.C. 1954) (stating that the trial court “undoubtedly lost 

jurisdiction, after the appeal was noted, to revoke or alter that particular ruling”). 

The trial court’s jurisdiction to render further rulings in this litigation extended only 

to matters that “do not result in revocation or alteration of the judgment on appeal.” 

Padgett, 478 A.2dat 1100.
3

The material facts are not in dispute and the question before us is one of law, 

as to which our review is de novo.2

 Second Northwest is an incorporated cooperative 

association having the purpose, stated in Article II of its bylaws, of “provid[ing] its 

members” (individuals who purchase and own stock in the corporation) with rental 

housing on a nonprofit basis. To that end, the bylaws provide that Second Northwest 

“will offer to the members Occupancy Agreements on the dwelling units in the 

housing project” (emphasis added) that it acquired with funds contributed by 

subscribers to membership. One of those members was appellant’s grandmother, 

Norma Weatherly, who had an Occupancy Agreement for Unit 204 at 405 N Street 

in Northwest Washington, D.C. Appellant, who is neither a member of Second 

Northwest herself nor a signatory to the Occupancy Agreement, lived in Unit 204 

with her grandmother, as a member of the family.

Norma Weatherly passed away on October 10, 2021. Appellant Jamila 

Weatherly was appointed the executor (personal representative) of Norma 

Weatherly’s estate. The order of appointment states that the decedent died intestate 

and that administration of the estate is unsupervised. We are given to understand 

 

Accordingly, we proceed to decide the present appeal of the judgment of 

possession.

2 See, e.g., Matthews v. District of Columbia, 875 A.2d 650, 654 (D.C. 2005).
4

that the probate proceedings have not concluded and that appellant has not 

distributed or sold the estate’s stock in Second Northwest; nor has appellant 

otherwise disposed of Norma Weatherly’s contract rights under the Occupancy 

Agreement. Nonetheless, since her grandmother’s demise, appellant has continued 

to occupy Unit 204 and has refused to vacate it. Despite appellant’s nonmembership 

in Second Northwest and lack of any rental agreement to which she is a party, she 

claims to be entitled to live in Unit 204 by virtue of her status as Norma Weatherly’s 

putative heir or as the executor of Norma Weatherly’s estate. 

The bylaws contain provisions specifically addressing the disposition of a 

membership in Second Northwest upon the death of a member. Section 8 provides 

a sixty-day window following the member’s death for “a member of his immediate 

family” who is an heir or legatee to become a member of Second Northwest by 

executing a Subscription Agreement and Occupancy Agreement and paying all 

amounts due thereunder.3

 The bylaws thus explicitly contemplate that an heir will 

 

3 It may be doubted whether appellant would have been eligible to take 

advantage of this opportunity, inasmuch as the term “immediate family” generally 

refers to a person’s parents, spouse, children, and siblings, see Family, BLACK’S LAW 

DICTIONARY (10th ed. 2014); but see Williams v. Baker, 572 A.2d 1062, 1069 n.16 

(D.C. 1990) (en banc) (“We leave it to future cases, however, to determine the 

meaning of the term ‘immediate family.’”). The parties before us have not raised or 

addressed this issue.
5

need to execute an Occupancy Agreement in order to assume the tenancy of a 

deceased member’s rental unit. Appellant concededly did not take advantage of that 

opportunity, nor did she seek to do so even after the sixty-day window of opportunity 

closed.4

 We therefore do not see how appellant’s status as an heir provides her with 

any right to reside in the unit following the death of her grandmother.

Appellant argues that the Occupancy Agreement nonetheless entitles her to 

reside in Unit 204 indefinitely because she is the executor of Norma Weatherly’s 

estate. She relies on the paragraph in the Occupancy Agreement granting the right 

“to have and to hold said dwelling unit unto the Member, his executors, 

administrators and authorized assigns, on the terms and conditions set forth herein 

and in the Articles of Incorporation and By-Laws of the Corporation[.]” (Emphases 

added.) This language, appellant contends, means that as executor she has an 

absolute right to possess and occupy Norma Weatherly’s dwelling unit (at least 

pending its sale or distribution in the administration of the estate).

This interpretation of the Occupancy Agreement is untenable, in our view, 

because it is inconsistent with the expressed intent of the bylaws to limit occupancy 

 

4 Section 8 goes on to provide that if the foregoing time-limited opportunity 

is not taken, and if Second Northwest itself does not purchase the membership from 

the deceased member’s estate, then the “legal representative of the deceased 

member” may proceed to sell the membership. Appellant has not pursued that option 

either. 
6

of rental units to members of Second Northwest and, upon the death of a member, 

to provide for the execution of a new Occupancy Agreement with another member. 

We agree with Judge Edelman that an executor’s ability under the Occupancy 

Agreement “to have and to hold” the deceased member’s dwelling unit under “the 

terms and conditions” of the bylaws is not plausibly interpreted to convey a right of 

indefinite occupancy to the executor as if the executor were herself a member of 

Second Northwest. Rather, as Judge Edelman put it, the “have and hold” provision 

is “most plausibly interpreted” to mean that the executor may exercise control over 

the property to the extent necessary “to wrap up the affairs of the deceased.” While 

this may entail some right of entry by the executor at reasonable times to protect and 

preserve the unit and its contents pending their ultimate disposition in the 

administration of the estate (presumably along with the decedent’s stock in Second 

Northwest), that hardly means the executor is empowered to reside in the unit as a 

member would be allowed to do, in the absence of an Occupancy Agreement.

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the judgment for possession.

So ordered.