Opinion ID: 1938216
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The remedial character of the Act.

Text: Before we assess Graybill's procedural contentions, we think it appropriate to place them in the proper statutory context. Our Rental Housing Act was designed, in substantial part, to protect low-and moderate-income tenants from the erosion of their income from increased housing costs. D.C.Code § 45-2502(1) (1986 Repl.). The Act is remedial in character. See Revithes, supra, 536 A.2d at 1016. Like other such legislation, it should be liberally construed to achieve its purposes. See Coles v. Penny, 174 U.S.App.D.C. 277, 283, 531 F.2d 609, 615 (1976). The wealthiest among us do not live in low- to moderate-income housing, and many complainants in cases brought under the Act are not affluent, nor are they in a position to afford to retain private counsel to conduct protracted proceedings before the Commission and the courts. Like the civil rights statute which the court construed in Coles, the Act relies largely on lay persons, operating without legal assistance, to initiate and litigate administrative and judicial proceedings. [14] [Procedural] technicalities are particularly inappropriate in [such] a statutory scheme. Love v. Pullman Co., 404 U.S. 522, 527, 92 S.Ct. 616, 619, 30 L.Ed.2d 679 (1972); Coles, supra, 174 U.S.App.D.C. at 282-83, 531 F.2d at 614-15. Although neither this court nor the Commission is authorized to overlook jurisdictional requirements in order to vindicate subjective notions of fairness, it is appropriate for this court, in resolving procedural issues with respect to which reasonable people might differ, to keep in mind the remedial character of the statute and the important role which lay litigants play in its enforcement. As we have previously noted, the proceedings in this case, now in their seventh calendar year, have an extraordinary and tortured history. On the bedrock question whether Graybill was entitled to the exemption, the hearing examiner ruled first for Graybill and then for Goodman. Following the first internal appeal, the former Commission sustained the examiner's decision denying the exemption but remanded the case for additional findings relating to the proper remedy. After the examiner had ruled on the questions which had been remanded to him, both sides appealed to the Commission, which had been reconstituted in the interim. When the present Commissioners decided the second internal appeal, they went beyond the issues on remand, overruled the decision of their predecessors, and held that Graybill was entitled to an exemption after all. It is the present Commission's decision which Goodman now asks us to review. Graybill claims that during the course of those proceedings, Goodman failed adequately to assert his contentions as to lack of notice both in this court and in the proceedings before the Commission. We consider Goodman's submissions to both bodies.