Court Opinion

ID: 9760425
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:55:01.24006+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:12.197104
License: Public Domain

BELSON, Associate Judge, Retired,
dissenting:
I cannot agree with my colleagues’ decision to affirm. Appellant Brenda Joyce may or may not have a meritorious case on the merits, but the procedural history of this case does not justify a ruling that she has forfeited the right to have the merits adjudicated. To use the language that our precedents have developed, the trial court committed at least a “slight abuse of its discretion,” Starling v. Jephunneh Lawrence & Assoc., 495 A.2d 1157, 1159 (D.C.1985), when it declined to relieve her of her procedural default.
Although I deal with the same set of facts that the majority describes, I see them quite differently. During the course of a hard-fought landlord and tenant case, the Superior Court imposed a Drayton stay while the Rental Accommodations and Conversion Division (RACD) of the District of Columbia Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs considered certain petitions of appellee tenants.1 Drayton v. Poretsky Management, Inc., 462 A.2d 1115 (D.C.1983). While the reason for the Dray-ton stay remained fully in force, tenants asked the trial court to enter an order setting aside the stay, to release the funds in the court registry to the tenants, and to dismiss the action for possession. Although the tenants filed their motion shortly after the RACD had entered a hearing level decision, they knew or should have known that the Drayton stay remained in effect, as this court had held in Drayton that such stays remain in effect not only during any internal administrative appeals, but also during any subsequent appeal to this court. Drayton, supra, 462 A.2d at 1120 & n. 9. Making it unmistakably clear that the matter was still pending before the administrative agency and that the stay therefore should remain in place was the fact that the tenants themselves had petitioned for reconsideration at the hearing level and their petition was still pending before the RACD.2
*203Nevertheless, tenants filed their above-described motion with the trial court and somehow caused it to be brought on for hearing sooner than permitted by Superior Court Landlord and Tenant Rule 13.3 When the matter came before the Landlord and Tenant judge on July 1,1988, he granted the tenants’ unopposed motion to vacate the stay, to release the registry funds to the tenants, and to dismiss the complaint of appellant Joyce, the landlord. Notwithstanding the onus imposed by a heavy landlord and tenant calendar, it appears fair to observe that under the circumstances the judge (not the judge whose order is on appeal) would have been well advised to scan the underlying papers which clearly showed that the RACD proceeding was still going on and that, necessarily, any internal administrative appellate or judicial appellate proceedings were still in the future or to ask the tenants elementary questions about the status of the proceeding before the RACD. The most cursory inquiry or review of the file would have informed the judge that he was required to leave the Drayton stay in effect. Instead, the tenants’ groundless motion was perfunctorily granted. The court ordered the sum of $6,775, two years’ accumulation of unpaid rent, to be released from the registry of the court to the tenants, and appellant Joyce’s action was dismissed. Even the fact that the amount in question was so obviously substantial to a private individual landlord triggered no inquiry into the circumstances.
According to appellant Joyce, she came into court promptly to seek relief when she learned, some five months later, that the tenants had received all of the rent deposited in the registry and had secured the dismissal of her action. A hearing held before a different judge focused upon whether the tenants had made diligent efforts to serve appellant Joyce with their original motion and whether appellant Joyce had made any effort to contest the matter before seeking relief some five months later. This, as I will develop, was not the proper focus for the second judge’s inquiry. The second judge denied the motion for relief, and subsequently denied as well a motion for reconsideration of his original ruling.
Our precedents have set forth clearly the frame of reference within which motions like appellant Joyce’s must be evaluated.
Each case must be evaluated in light of its own particular facts taking into consideration whether the movant (1) had actual notice of the proceedings; (2) acted in good faith; (3) took prompt action; and (4) presented an adequate defense. Prejudice to the non-moving party is also relevant.
Starling, supra, 495 A.2d at 1159-60; accord, Jones v. Health Resources Corp. of America, 509 A.2d 1140, 1145 (D.C.1986); Pfeister-Barter, Inc. v. Laois, 499 A.2d 915, 917 (D.C.1985); Alexander v. Polinger Co., 496 A.2d 267, 269 (D.C.1985); Mewborn v. U.S. Life Credit Corp., 473 A.2d 389, 391 (D.C.1984); Clark v. Moler, 418 A.2d 1039, 1043 (D.C.1980); Dunn v. Profit, 408 A.2d 991, 993 (D.C.1979).
Applying those criteria here, I observe first that appellant Joyce’s vehement assertion of her rights suggests strongly that she did not have actual notice of the July 1 proceeding. It is fair to say that this case had been contested not only with vigor but also with feeling by the parties. It is unlikely that if appellant Joyce had had any inkling that the tenants were trying to secure the unauthorized lifting of the Drayton stay, the removal of the equivalent of two years’ rent out of the court’s registry, and the dismissal of her complaint for possession, she would not have presented herself before the court with all of the energy that she displayed in her later motion for relief and her appearance before *204this court. In making this observation, I acknowledge readily that we must defer to the motions judge’s finding that the tenants made diligent efforts to serve appellant Joyce with the motion to lift the stay and for other relief, but point out 1) that that should not have been the sole focus of the court when considering appellant Joyce’s request for relief and 2) that even assuming diligent efforts at service, there was strong circumstantial evidence that appellant Joyce did not receive this motion.
As to whether appellant Joyce acted in good faith, it is sufficient to note that she was an appellant attempting to collect the stated rent for premises rented to the tenants. Her action was, on its face, a proceeding brought in good faith.
With regard to the taking of prompt action, appellant Joyce represents that she came into court promptly upon learning in December of the dismissal of her landlord and tenant actions. The same reasons which suggest that she did not have actual notice of the proceedings suggest as well that she tried promptly to overturn the tenants’ groundless but successful effort to secure withdrawal of the monies from the court registry and dismissal of her suit.
With respect to setting forth an adequate defense which, as the majority concedes, means in this context that the landlord would have had a sound legal position to argue if she had been before the court on July 1 when it erroneously vacated the Drayton stay, it is obvious that appellant Joyce earns a high score on this criterion. The first Landlord and Tenant judge plainly erred in granting tenants the relief they requested while the RACD was reconsidering its earlier decision.
We noted in Starling, supra, that prejudice to the non-moving party is also relevant. 495 A.2d at 1159-60. I submit that appellant Joyce also fares well on this score. The non-moving parties here succeeded, in effect, in gaining for themselves two years of rent-free occupancy of the housing accommodation in question by prematurely bringing before the court a groundless request for the vacation of a Drayton stay. If the tenants would find themselves burdened by a requirement that they pay back immediately the monies they were mistakenly allowed to recover from the registry, the trial court could fashion a less onerous schedule of repayment over time.
I think the foregoing makes it entirely clear that a weighing of the factors we set forth in Starling, supra, demonstrates that there was at least slight abuse of discretion on the part of the court when it declined to set aside the default entered against appellant Joyce. Her position as to the good faith of her initial underlying landlord and tenant action and the adequacy of her defense to the ill-conceived motion she failed to oppose is extremely strong. Her position with respect to lack of actual notice and taking prompt action is more than plausible. Any prejudice to the non-moving parties originated with their premature and meritless motion to set aside the Drayton stay and could be mitigated by the trial court’s handling of the matter of repayment of money into the registry.
Finally, I think the majority holds the pro se appellant to an unduly stringent standard with respect to her choice of the particular sub-paragraph of Superior Court Civil Rule 60(b) that she chose to move under. It is hardly surprising that a party unschooled in the law suspected that there had been fraud or misrepresentation or “other misconduct of an adverse party,” Super.CtCiv.R. 60(b)(3), where her adversaries in a case marked by bad feelings have somehow misled the trial court into entering an erroneous vacation of the Drayton stay. When a pro se party tells the court that she did not receive notice of a hearing and did not know of the entry of an order against her, it is apparent that she is asserting mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect under Rule 60(b)(1). While, as the majority suggests, appellant Joyce obviously had a duty to keep the court informed of a current mailing address, Super.Ct.Civ.R. 10 — I, she need not argue that she had “no duty to keep the court informed,” as the majority puts it, but rather that her failure to do so was *205excusable, especially as it obviously occurred during the course of an ongoing stay of the Superior Court proceedings, a stay which was lifted only because of her adversaries’ groundless motion.
Ultimately, my disagreement with the majority opinion is that it fails, I submit, to apply realistically the concept of “slight abuse of discretion” that this court has developed over the years. If that is the standard we are to decide by, then the trial court should be required to exercise its discretion to relieve a party in appellant Joyce’s circumstances from the consequences of her procedural default.

. The tenants alleged that the rental property was not properly registered with RACD, that landlord Joyce had retaliated against them for exercising their rights, and that Joyce had substantially reduced services and facilities which were a part of the mandatory rent.

. In the memorandum of points and authorities that accompanied their motion, the pro se tenants informed the trial court that they had requested the RACD to reconsider its decision and to grant them greater relief. They maintained, however, that because they simply sought to increase the award, the findings of fact and conclusions of law would remain the same after June 30, 1988, unless Joyce filed an appeal.

. A docket entry reads "Notice of Hearing set for 7/1/88 at 9:00 a.m. filed by consent.” It is clear that appellant Joyce did not consent to the hearing of the motion before the expiration of the normal time required by the rule. Although this raises a question about the propriety of the manner in which the tenants secured the calendaring of the motion, the timing was not consequential as appellant Joyce claims not to have received a copy of the motion and presumably would have failed to appear at any hearing held a few days later in compliance with the scheduling rules.