Opinion ID: 2185061
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Standing, Justiciability, and Class Action Status

Text: Finally, we consider the government's contentions that the landlords lack standing to seek judicial review; that the case is not justiciable or ripe for decision; and that the granting of class action relief by the trial court was improper. As to the first of these contentions, the landlords clearly have standing pursuant to § 45-1625 to seek judicial review in the Superior Court of the failure of the Commission to act upon the previously mentioned 279 landlord petitions within the required 60 days of § 7a of the Regulation. Section 45-1625 permits any person or class of persons aggrieved . . . by any failure on the part of the Commission to act to seek judicial review in the trial court by appropriate pleading. The landlords also fit within the three-pronged standing test synthesizing recent Supreme Court cases which this court accepted in Basiliko v. District of Columbia; [22] they have alleged injury in fact through the loss of increased rent because of the failure of the Commission to decide upon the petitions seeking such relief; they have alleged that they are within the zone of interest which the Regulation and statute at issue are designed to protect; and they have further alleged that there is no clear and convincing indication of a legislative intent to preclude judicial review. Moreover, judicial review is not precluded here by the principle of Exhaustion of Administrative Remedies. This case does not present an exhaustion problem since it is not a suit to review agency action but an attempt to invalidate the very regulation upon which the agency is based. See Berger v. Board of Psychologist Examiners for the District of Columbia, D.C.App., 313 A.2d 602, 604-605 (1973). Further, there is no meaningful remedy to exhaust because of the previously mentioned administrative inability of the Commission to decide the petitions. It is settled that no requirement of exhaustion of administrative remedies exists if the attempt to exhaust would be futile. Smith v. Illinois Bell Telephone Co., 270 U.S. 587, 591, 46 S.Ct. 408, 70 L.Ed. 747 (1926); 3 K. Davis, Administrative Law Treatise § 20.07 (1958 ed., 1970 Supp.); Note, Judicial Acceleration of the Administrative Process: The Right to Relief from Unduly Protracted Proceedings, 72 Yale L.J. 574 (1963). As to the argument of the District of Columbia that the landlords' proper legal remedy is to wait 60 days and then commence an action in the Superior Court pursuant to § 45-1625, we hold that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in taking equitable jurisdiction in this case, particularly in light of the fact that the aforementioned legal remedy would entail a multiplicity of actions by distressed landlords. As to the second of the government's contentions regarding justiciability, the admission by the Commission of its inability to process the landlords' hardship petitions renders the landlords' claims of lost rental income concrete rather than abstract or hypothetical. The issues are appropriate for judicial review, and denial of review would impose great financial hardship. See Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U.S. 136, 87 S.Ct. 1507, 18 L.Ed.2d 681 (1967); Toilet Goods Association v. Gardner, 387 U.S. 158, 87 S.Ct. 1520, 18 L.Ed. 2d 697 (1967). Cf. D.C.Code 1973, § 1-1510, in reference to rules of law for judicial review of agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed. The government's final contention, that the granting of class relief to appellants was improper since the entitlement of a landlord to a rent increase varies so greatly from case to case that there can be no common question of law or fact, should be considered on remand to the trial court in light of what we have said and the nature of the remedy we fashion. Furthermore, the result of the trial court's failure to determine whether the action is maintainable as a class action, pursuant to Super.Ct.Civ.R. 23(c) and 23-I(c), is that the relief granted is valid as to the named plaintiffs but not as to the class which they sought to represent. [23]