Opinion ID: 1472683
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Judge Glickman

Text: Judge Glickman's dissent rests on the proposition that the tenant's request for accommodation was simply too vague to rise to the level of a bona fide request for a reasonable accommodation under the Fair Housing Act. Judge Glickman does not dispute, however, that the tenant requested a stay of the eviction proceeding for the period reasonably required for the D.C. government to clean up the apartment and for the tenant to demonstrate, through the continuing help of the D.C. government, that she would keep it clean  failing which she would not contest eviction. Nor does our colleague dispute that an apartment once cleaned, and kept clean on an ongoing basis, would erase the legal justification for the landlord's notice to cure or quit, thus cure the tenant's default, and forestall similar default in the future. Under the circumstances and prevailing case law, that proffer is specific enough. See supra at 1133-38. We have explained at length why we cannot conclude that the evidence proffered by the tenant in support of her request was insufficient for a jury to find that the tenant's proposal was possible, or reasonable on its face or in the run of cases, or even reasonable on the particular facts, whichever of these case-law formulations for reasonableness were to be applied. See id. And our inability to rule against the tenant as a matter of law becomes especially clear in light of evidence that the landlord failed in its legal obligation  an obligation that Judge Glickman effectively reads out of the law  to open a dialogue with the tenant to elicit whatever additional specifics the landlord deemed necessary to evaluating the tenant's proposal. We have also explained, moreover, that a landlord's failure to engage in the required dialogue relieves a tenant from any need to proffer additional specifics beyond those required for a coherent, ostensibly feasible proposal that would allow a reasonable jury to find that if all its elements were implemented, it would accommodate the tenant's handicap and cure her default, presently and for the future. Contrary to our reading of the record, however, Judge Glickman states that [p]rior to trial, when a productive dialogue was still possible, the landlord's counsel solicited the `details' of a suitable accommodation from Ms. Douglas's counsel, and her counsel could not provide them. In our view, that statement summarizes the situation lopsidedly. On this record, a jury could reasonably find that the landlord's counsel, rather than soliciting details, essentially stonewalled the tenant's counsel by waiting over three months to discuss the matter and then by stating, two weeks before trial, that his proposal simply lacked any specifics for us to really make an evaluation on. Landlord's counsel then rejected the proffered D.C. government cleanup on the ground that tenant's counsel had no authority to speak for the D.C. government (even though counsel's pretrial testimony represented that his government witnesses, Sutton and Byrd, could satisfy the landlord in this regard). The landlord's counsel thereafter declined to discuss the matter further. This pretrial behavior by counsel for the landlord, coupled with counsel's statements in the trial court, provides the basis for a reasonable jury finding that the landlord did not make a good faith effort to enter the required dialogue with tenant's counsel as to reasonable accommodation. We are satisfied, therefore, that under these circumstances the trial court would have a basis for sending the tenant's defense to the jury under the authority of Jankowski Lee & Assocs. (a case Judge Glickman cites) and its progeny. [80] Judge Glickman, like Judge Schwelb, stresses the difficulty that the tenant's counsel had in finding his client during the days immediately before trial  a situation, he says, that meant a meaningful dialogue of the sort envisioned by the majority ceased to be possible. He then adds a footnote stating, with apparent reference to the two weeks in June before trial, that the tenant's unavailability for reasonable accommodation discussions ... was determinative of everything, for it made it impossible for her counsel even to propose a reasonable accommodation for the landlord's consideration. Those two statements ignore that the landlord's counsel concededly had refused any dialogue with the tenant's counsel for a period of months after a request for reasonable accommodation had been made, and they further ignore the landlord's obligation to commence that dialogue promptly, and certainly enough before a trial to permit a good faith exchange. Although he refers to the tenant's absence for several weeks before the April 17 pretrial conference, Judge Glickman does not claim that the tenant was unavailable during the entire period when the landlord was aware of her request, through counsel, for a stay coupled with a D.C. government cleanup. Significantly, he does not dispute the evidence that the tenant was available for a meeting with D.C. government representatives Sutton and Byrd on June 5, 2002, within days after the landlord first acknowledged the request for reasonable accommodation. She presumably would have been available to her counsel then as well. Furthermore, as noted above, there was evidence from which a reasonable jury could find that the landlord declined in any event to engage in meaningful discussion with the tenant's counsel toward reasonable accommodation  the kind of lawyer-to-lawyer discussion that did not depend on the tenant's presence at every session. By focusing primarily on the period immediately before trial, therefore, our colleague overlooks the tenant's availability from time to time during the much longer period after accommodation had been requested and the landlord had an obligation to respond. Accordingly, by emphasizing that a meaningful dialogue ceased to be possible, our colleague in effect is claiming that the landlord won a game of gotcha: the tenant's apparent unavailability from the day after she met with Sutton and Byrd (June 6) to the trial date (June 17) erased all legal significance from the landlord's own multi-month unavailability. The law applicable here does not work that way. Judge Glickman concludes, in any event, that if the tenant had been allowed to put on her discrimination defense it would have fallen flat on its face, because she had no evidence to present. To the contrary, as indicated earlier in response to Judge Schwelb, if a trial had begun in which the tenant was allowed to put on her reasonable accommodation defense, one cannot say on this record that she assuredly had no evidence to present. The D.C. government representatives, Sutton and Byrd, were available. The landlord's representatives also were available. And who is to say that the tenant's counsel would not have been able to find his client with the good news that her defense would go forward (assuming that her presence was essential to that defense)? The fact that counsel on a number of occasions showed caution in answering questions about how long it would take to locate his mentally ill client should not be held determinative of an inability to find her altogether. And we cannot say that the trial court would not have granted a reasonable continuance for that purpose, upon request, if the court, based on a correct understanding of the law, in contrast with the understanding relied on at trial, ruled that the reasonable accommodation defense could go forward. It takes two, landlord as well as tenant, to work out a reasonable accommodation. And, as we have explained, the landlord was legally obligated to discuss the matter in response to the tenant's counsel's letter of February 20, 2002, and certainly thereafter when the tenant expressly requested the stay and proffered a cleanup, and continued cleaning, by the D.C. government. On this record, a reasonable jury could find that the landlord did not meet its obligation to come to the table when the tenant made her request. As a consequence, the tenant was entitled to have the trial court determine whether she had proffered enough detail in her request that a jury could reasonably find that her proposed accommodation was reasonable because it was responsive to her handicap and satisfied applicable case law formulations. Accordingly, the tenant must have a renewed opportunity to proffer her defense to the trial court.