Case Name: AIMA NEAULANI ALULI, NOA TONG ALULI and KEPOIKAI CHOY ALULI, Trustees of the Estate of NOA W. ALULI, Deceased, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. RICHARD V. TRUSDELL, Defendant-Appellant
Court: Supreme Court of the State of Hawaii
Jurisdiction: Hawaii
Decision Date: 1973-04-04
Citations: 54 Haw. 417
Docket Number: No. 5256
Parties: AIMA NEAULANI ALULI, NOA TONG ALULI and KEPOIKAI CHOY ALULI, Trustees of the Estate of NOA W. ALULI, Deceased, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. RICHARD V. TRUSDELL, Defendant-Appellant
Judges: Richardson, C.J., Abe, Levinson, Kobayashi, JJ., and Circuit Judge Wong in Place of Marumoto, J., Disqualified
Reporter: Hawaii Reports
Volume: 54
Pages: 417–432

Head Matter:
AIMA NEAULANI ALULI, NOA TONG ALULI and KEPOIKAI CHOY ALULI, Trustees of the Estate of NOA W. ALULI, Deceased, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. RICHARD V. TRUSDELL, Defendant-Appellant
No. 5256
April 4, 1973
Richardson, C.J., Abe, Levinson, Kobayashi, JJ., and Circuit Judge Wong in Place of Marumoto, J., Disqualified

Opinion:
OPINION OF THE COURT BY
ABE, J.
The plaintiffs-appellees, Aima Neaulani Aluli, et al., hereinafter referred to as "Landlord" are the owners of "The Iolani," an apartment building in Honolulu, Hawaii, and the defendant-appellant, Richard V. Trusdell, hereinafter referred to as "Tenant" occupied one of the apartments in the building on a month-to-month tenancy. On August 4, 1971, the landlord served upon the tenant a notice to vacate on or before August 31, 1971. Upon the tenant's refusal to vacate the premises, the landlord commenced summary possession proceedings in the Honolulu District Court on September 9, 1971.
The tenant's second defense stated:
The primary purpose of this eviction is to block, hamper or obstruct the tenant union of which the defendant is the organizer and member in violation of the defendant's rights of freedom of speech, freedom of association and right to petition government for a redress of grievances, and defendant's inherent right to petition government all as is more fully outlined in the counterclaim.
Upon the trial, the district court granted summary possession for the landlord, ruling that the second defense did- not raise any valid constitutional defenses to the summary possession action. The tenant appealed from the judgment. The primary issue in this appeal is whether the tenant had any valid constitutional defenses to the action.
Before stating our reasons for concluding that the tenant's allegations do not raise a constitutional defense, we wish to point out what we consider inadequacies and one-sidedness of the tenant's argument on the issue.
First, we believe that the rights of the landlord and tenant should be balanced. The landlord seeks to vindicate his right of possession as an incident of the ownership of the subject premises. On the other hand, the tenant's right is a permissive right of possession pursuant to a month-to-month tenancy terminable at the end of any month at the option of either party. Thus, these two "rights" may be the opposite sides of the same coin.
Second, the tenant appears to have assumed that the landlord does not have any First Amendment rights. If it is true that he is seeking possession of the rented premises for the sole reason that he disagrees or dislikes the tenant's communicative or associative activities, is not the landlord also protected by the First Amendment in expressing these disagreements or dislikes? Is not the requesting of judicial relief "petitioning government for redress of grievances"?
Third, in Lemle v. Breeden, 51 Haw. 426, 462 P.2d 470 (1969), we stated that "[t]he application of an implied warranty of habitability in leases gives recognition to the changes in leasing transactions today. It affirms the fact that a lease is, in essence, a sale as well as a transfer of an estate in land and is, more importantly, a contractual relationship." (Emphasis added.) 51 Haw. 426, 433, 462 P.2d 470, 474.
Thus, the landlord-tenant relationship is a contractual one in our jurisdiction. If we accept the tenant's contention, it would mean that we would be substantially altering this relationship and impairing the traditional right of a landlord to recover possession of the demised premises under the terms of a lease. Or otherwise stated, the tenant's obligation under a month-to-month tenancy to return the possession of the demised premises to the landlord upon the termination of such tenancy is abrogated. United States v. Blumenthal, 315 F.2d 351 (3d Cir. 1963); Wormood v. Alton Bay Camp Meeting Ass'n, 87 N.H. 136, 175 A. 233 (1934); De Wolfe v. Roberts, 229 Mass. 410, 412, 118 N.E. 885, 887 (1918). If this court were to rule as contended by the tenant, its ruling might contravene the provisions of the United States Constitution, Article I, Section 10, which states in part: "No State shall. . . pass any . . . law impairing the Obligation of Contracts."
We are upholding the district court's ruling that the First Amendment rights claimed by the tenant did not constitute a defense to the summary possession action brought by the landlord for the following two reasons:
(1) We do not believe that the tenant's First Amendment rights have been infringed upon or abrogated by the actions of the landlord. Even after the landlord regains possession of the premises under the summary possession action, the tenant may retain membership in the tenant's union, petition the government for redress of grievances and speak as freely about the condition of the premises, as when he is in possession of the premises. Furthermore, we do not see how the tenant is punished in any way for his activities. Being a month-to-month tenant, he had no right to demand that his tenancy be extended once the current term expired. When the landlord repossesses the premises at the end of the current term, the tenant is not being deprived of anything except his nonproprietary expectancy that his tenancy will be extended another term.
At most, the tenant's only complaint is that allowing the landlord to regain possession of the premises will lessen his interest in the subject matter about which he wishes to exercise his First Amendment rights. We do not believe the First Amendment rights claimed by the tenant operate to prefer the tenant's expectancy of continued possession of the premises over the right of the landlord to regain possession at the end of the tenant's term, so as to encourage the tenant to continue exercising his First Amendment rights in the hopes that the conditions of his tenancy would be improved.
As we have already stated, whether he is dispossessed or not, he can continue to exercise the constitutional rights he claims that the summary possession action deprives him of. Nothing is being taken away from him by the summary possession action because the landlord, under the terms of the month-to-month tenancy as incidental to the ownership of the premises, has the right to regain possession of the premises upon the termination thereof.
(2) We cannot see how the requisite state action exists in this case. The tenant's contention of state action requisite for the application of First Amendment guarantees is unsupported by the authorities he cites. The tenant relies on New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964); Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948); and American Federation of Labor v. Swing, 312 U.S. 321 (1941), in finding that the use of the court by the landlord to regain possession of the premises under the summary possession statute constituted state action. We believe that each of these cases is distinguishable from the case now before us.
Shelley v. Kraemer, supra, 334 U.S. 1 (1948), established that a state court's enforcement of "restrictive covenants which have as their purpose the exclusion of persons of designated race or color from the ownership or occupancy of real property," id. at 4, constituted state action and thus violated the equal protection provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The United States Supreme Court significantly expanded the concept of state action in this decision which spawned uncertainties that are still unresolved. One commentator, after reviewing the scholarly commentary and cases on the topic of state action with respect to constitutional guarantees against racial discrimination declared that "[t]he field [state action] is a conceptual disaster area." Black, Foreword: "State Action," Equal Protection, and California's Proposition 14, 81 Harv. L. Rev. 69, 95 (1967).
In Edwards v. Habib, 397 F.2d 687 (D.C. Cir. 1968), a landlord (Habib) evicted a tenant (Edwards) after the tenant had reported violations of the District of Columbia's sanitation codes. Although the Court of Appeals, through Judge J. Skelly Wright, discussed Edwards' argument that to allow an eviction on the basis that she had reported building code violations would abridge her First Amendment rights of free speech and of petitioning the government for redress of grievances, the court decided the case on public policy and statutory construction. Id. at 699. This discussion, however, is of interest since the argument of the tenant appears to parallel that of the dictum in the Habib case.
Judge Wright stated "the contours of Shelley remain undefined and it is uncertain just how far its reasoning extends." Id. at 691. Furthermore, he stated that "[i]t may be, however, that what is state action under the Fourteenth Amendment is not always state action under the First. To begin with, the Reconstruction amendments were enacted with a particular purpose in mind: to eradicate forever the vestiges of slavery and the black codes. In addition, the language of the First Amendment, 'Congress shall make no law . ,' is not as amenable as the Fourteenth Amendment is to the construction that there is state action by inaction or by judicial action which merely gives legal effect to privately made decisions. Indeed those who have expounded this theory of state action have been careful to limit their case to the area of racial discrimination." Id. at 693 (footnotes omitted). See also, Black, Foreword: "State Action," Equal Protection, and California's Proposition 14, 81 Harv. L. Rev. 69 (1967); Van Alstyne & Karst, State Action, 14 Stan. L. Rev. 3 (1961).
The tenant cites New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964) and American Federation of Labor v. Swing, 312 U.S. 321 (1941), to support his contention that state action required before the limitations of the First Amendment are invoked is present in this case. We agree that these cases stand for the proposition that common law or judge-made law is the functional equivalent of statutory law; and that where the state legislature is constitutionally proscribed from enacting laws which would abridge First Amendment rights, the judicial lawmaking power should likewise be circumscribed.
In American Federation of Labor v. Swing, supra at 325, the United States Supreme Court stated:
We are asked to sustain a decree [of a state court] which for purposes of this case asserts as the common law of a state that there can be no "peaceful picketing or peaceful persuasion" in relation to any dispute between an employer and a trade union unless the employer's own employees are in controversy with him.
Such a ban of free communication is inconsistent with the guarantee of freedom of speech [emphasis added]. . . .
In the Times v. Sullivan case, supra, what constituted state action was judicial law making and not judicial enforcement of the state law in itself. The case involved a civil libel action prosecuted by Sullivan, an elected public official of Alabama, based on the contents of an editorial advertisement printed by the New York Times Co. The United States Supreme Court summarized the Alabama law and at page 268 stated:
The question before us is whether this rule of liability as applied to an action brought by a public official against critics of his official conduct, abridges the freedom of speech and of the press that is guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments (emphasis added) .
Thus, under Times v. Sullivan, supra, when state power, whether it be judicial or legislative, is exercised to promulgate or maintain laws, the exercise of that power is subject to applicable constitutional limitations. We are certain that the United States Supreme Court did not mean to state as a general proposition, as the tenant contends, that any judicial enforcement of any law constitutes a sufficient exercise of state power so as to require constitutional restraints.
The summary possession statute, HRS § 666-1 of this state, does not, on its face, limit the exercise of First Amendment rights of the tenant. Our construction of this statute in no way abridges a tenant's exercise of First Amendment rights. The exercise of state power here is aimed at restoring possession of the premises to the person entitled thereto. There is no attempt here by the exercise of judicial or legislative law making power to regulate or limit the content or mode of communication or association in which a tenant may desire to engage in.
Edward C. Kemper, III (Mattoch, Edmunds, Kemper & Brown of counsel) for defendant-appellant.
Keith J. Steiner (Padgett, Greeley, Marumoto & Steiner of counsel) for plaintiffs-appellees.
We hold that when a court of this state awards possession to a landlord even if the landlord is motivated by his disagreement with the actions and speech of the tenant he is evicting, no state action is involved, which denies or infringes the tenant's right to exercise his First Amendment Constitutional rights.
Affirmed.
It is interesting to note that the dissent asserts that "article 1, section 10 'protecting the obligation of contracts against state action is directed only against the impairment by legislation and not judgments of courts.' " Then on the other hand it contends that a landlord as an incident of ownership of land may recover possession of the premises by summary possession action. "However, when the enforcement of those rights is accomplished by court action, such action may be state action and constitutional prohibitions would then be applicable." Under the dissent, how is one to determine when a court's judgment is a state action and when it is not a state action?
The rights of freedom of speech and freedom of association, and right to petition government for a redress of grievances, claimed to be a defense to a summary possession action by the tenant will be referred to collectively as "First Amendment rights."
" Although this is a civil lawsuit between private parties, the Alabama courts have applied a state rule of law which petitioners claim to impose invalid restrictions on their constitutional freedoms of speech and press. It matters not that that law has been applied in a civil action and that it is common law only, though supplemented by statute. See, e.g, Alabama Code, Tit. 7, § § 909-917. The test is not the form in which state power has been applied but, whatever the form, whether such power has in fact been exercised . . . ." 376 U.S. at 265.