Opinion ID: 2422541
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Giving effect to every provision

Text: [S]tatutory meaning is to be derived, not from the reading of a single sentence or section, but from consideration of an entire enactment against the backdrop of its policies and objectives. Dorchester House Assocs. Ltd P'ship v. District of Columbia Rental Hous. Comm'n, 938 A.2d 696, 702 (D.C.2007) (citation omitted); see also Hargrove, 5 A.3d at 635 n. 11. A statute should be construed so that effect is given to all its provisions, so that no part will be inoperative or superfluous, void or insignificant. Hibbs v. Winn, 542 U.S. 88, 101, 124 S.Ct. 2276, 159 L.Ed.2d 172 (2004) (quoting 2A NORMAN J. SINGER, STATUTES AND STATUTORY CONSTRUCTION § 46.06, at 181-86 (rev. 6th ed.2000)). In 1836 S Street Tenants Ass'n, 965 A.2d at 838, we applied this canon to the very statute at issue here, explaining that [w]e must, of course, read TOPA as a whole and resist any construction of its words [21] that would render part of the statute a nullity. In our view, the owners' construction of TOPA effectively renders inoperative the words sell the accommodation, which are among the most important words in the entire statute, if not the most important. The owners assert, as we have seen, that the placement of commas before and after the phrase for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use reflects a legislative judgment that TOPA shall apply to a sale only if the sale is for one of these purposes. Under the defendants' theory, TOPA's obligations therefore arise in three situations, namely, when an owner of a housing accommodation 1. sells the accommodation for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use; or 2. issues a notice of intent to recover possession for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use; or 3. issues a notice to vacate for purposes of demolition or housing use. It is undisputed that in all three of these situations, the tenants must be provided with notice of an opportunity to purchase at a fair price. But if the accommodation is a sale (as in situation No. 1), then it necessarily follows that before demolition of the accommodation or discontinuance of housing use can be carried out, the purchaser, as the party discontinuing rental use, will be obliged to provide the tenants with that notice and opportunity. In other words, if a sale to a third party is for the purpose of demolishing the premises or for discontinuing its use as housing, then that third party, i.e., the purchaser (as the party who proposes to demolish or discontinue) is responsible under the statute for providing a notice to the tenants and an opportunity to purchase, as specified therein. Indeed, it is difficult to understand how an owner could ever sell an accommodation for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use, for it would be the buyer, and not the seller, who would have the ability to carry out the demolition or to discontinue the use of the accommodation as housing, and it would therefore be the buyer, and not the seller, who would have to provide notice and opportunity to purchase to the tenants if the buyer decided to adhere to that plan. A construction of the statute which imposes an obligation on the seller on the basis of actions that must necessarily be taken by the buyer is unreasonable. Further, it is difficult to discern what, if any, rational purpose would be served in such a situation by also requiring the seller to provide a notice and an opportunity to purchase when the buyer is the principal actor in the transaction affecting the tenants, and when the buyer must therefore give that notice and opportunity to them prior to demolishing the accommodation or discontinuing its use as housing. It is surely unreasonable to suggest that both the seller and the purchaser must provide the same notice and opportunity. Moreover, in many if not most cases, the seller may not be in a position to know whether or not the purchaser proposes to continue to use the premises as rental housing, and it makes no sense, in such a situation, to impose the obligation on the seller to inform the tenants of facts of which the seller is unaware. If the inclusion in the statute of the words sell an accommodation is to have any practical consequence, then those words must necessarily refer to a situation in which there will be no automatic obligation on the part of the buyer to provide notice and opportunity. That situation can arise only if the sale to the buyer is not for the purpose of demolition or discontinuance of housing use. Accordingly, as the Legal Aid Society states in its amicus brief, the term sell, as limited by appellees, has no function to perform: TOPA rights, on appellees' reading, depend entirely on the issuance of a notice to vacate/intent to recover possession for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use. If that is what the Council intended, years of litigation over what constitutes a sale could have been avoided, and the Council could have saved itself the trouble of amending § 42-3404.02 several times to add and amend subsections (b) and (c) to clarify the meaning of sell and sale. Moreover, since 1980, the Council has repeatedly amended TOPA to expand the definition of a sale. Each of these amendments would have been a pointless frolic, to quote the Legal Aid Society's brief, if the only sales that triggered TOPA rights were those for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use. See, e.g., D.C.Code § 42-3404.02(b) & (c), as adopted in and amended by D.C. Law 8-49 (1989); D.C. Law 10-144 (1994); D.C. Law 10-176 (1994); D.C. Law 11-31 (1995); D.C. Law 16-15 (2005). For example, in 1995, the Council added subsections (b) and (c), which, among other things, potentially treat a master lease as a sale which is subject to a tenant's opportunity to purchase. D.C.Code § 42-3404.02(b) & (c). That change would be of no consequence if the owners' construction were correct, for it is difficult to imagine how a master lease for a housing accommodation could ever be a sale for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use. Further revisions were enacted in 2005 and 2008, see annotation to D.C.Code § 42-3404.02 (Supp.2010), and no mention is made in any of them of limiting the sales triggering the tenant's opportunity to purchase to those made for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use. The repeated adoption of amendments and revisions which would have little or no effect under the owners' proposed construction confirms the lesson of the legislative history, namely, that such a construction was not intended and probably never crossed the Councilmembers' minds. Although the views of a subsequent [Council] form a hazardous basis for inferring the intent of an earlier one, United States v. Price, 361 U.S. 304, 313, 80 S.Ct. 326, 4 L.Ed.2d 334 (1960); but cf. Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367, 380-81 & n. 8, 89 S.Ct. 1794, 23 L.Ed.2d 371 (1969), it is implausible to suggest that the Council adopted all of these amendments while believing that only sales for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use were covered by TOPA. Further, the owners' interpretation would so diminish the significance of the terms sell and sale in the statutory scheme that it cannot be reconciled with the Council's careful attention to detail regarding what constitutes a sale, what an offer of sale must include and who must receive it, the obligation to bargain in good faith, the tenant's right to assign or sell his or her rights, procedures governing negotiations for housing accommodations of different sizes, requirements for the formation of tenant organizations to negotiate sales contracts for accommodations with five or more units, and a description of the timing of sales covered by the Act. All of these matters are addressed in the statute. See D.C.Code §§ 42-3404.02 to -3404.12. There would be no reasonable purpose for such an elaborate scheme if the Council had intended TOPA to provide tenants with an opportunity to purchase only when rental units are about to be demolished or discontinued as housing use  a relatively infrequent event. Indeed, it appears that of this court's many decisions construing TOPA that are cited in the briefs of the parties or amicus curiae, demolition or discontinuance of housing use was contemplated in only one. See 1618 Twenty-First St. Tenants' Ass'n v. The Phillips Collection, 829 A.2d 201 (D.C.2003).