Court Opinion

ID: 9767445
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:19:54.357228+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:06.651008
License: Public Domain

John I. Purtle, Justice, dissenting. Arkansas has won another distinction: it is the only state in the nation which imposes criminal sanctions on a person who does not pay his rent on time. When we handed down Gorman v. Ratliff, 289 Ark. 332, 712 S.W.2d 888 (1986), I was of the opinion that we were joining the rest of the country in rendering an enlightened decision on the relationship between landlord and tenant. I was mistaken. The majority has, with all the speed of a crawfish, backed into the 19th century. The appellant was pulled out of her bed on March 3, 1988, and taken to the jail in Jacksonville because she had not paid her rent. She had agreed to pay rent in the amount of $425.00 per month. Possession was taken on December 1,1987, at which time she was given a $50.00 credit for cleaning up the place before moving in. She paid $300.00 in cash. Subsequent payments of $300, $200, and $398.50 were paid. Given credit for the $50.00, she has paid a total of $1248.50, which is $26.50 short of three months rent. On the 15th of February, 1988, before the third month was up, she was given written notice to vacate. If her occupancy had ended on that date, she had overpaid her rent. I am aware that the landlord’s agent claimed $200.00 of the amount paid was for a security deposit. However, it was never refunded.. The facts of this case do not convince me that the appellant failed to pay her rent without justification. The constitutionality of Ark. Code Ann. § 18-16-101 (1987) is ripe for adjudication. Gorman was decided with contemporary reasoning. There we rejected forcible self-help, but we did not sanction criminal penalties for failure to pay a debt. According to the preamble to the act, the provisions of Ark. Code Ann. § 18-16-101 were clearly designed to assist landlords in cities and towns. (The reason landlords outside cities, towns and villages were not in need of assistance is not explained.) I believe the present decision is contrary to the theme of the Gorman opinion, which was “to compel people ‘to the more pacific course of suits in courts, where the weak arid strong stand upon equal terms.’ ” Gorman continued: “This concept has evolved until now the modern doctrine requires a landlord, otherwise entitled to possession, upon the refusal of the tenant to surrender the leased premises, to ‘resort to the remedy given by law to secure it.’ ” The Gorman decision interpreted Act 615 of 1981, Ark. Code Ann. § 18-60-301 et seq. (1987), concerning forcible entry and detainer and unlawful detainer, as evincing a desire by the legislature to extend additional protection to parties in possession of property before that property could be taken from them. We stated that the act also provided procedures to expedite the removal of the parties who are unlawfully in possession of property. Practically all jurisdictions have recognized that a renter or lessee has a property interest in the premises. A holdover tenant, whether by written lease or oral agreement, is no longer considered a trespasser by the enlightened courts of the nation. The constitutionality of Ark. Code Ann. § 18-16-101 was clearly challenged in the trial court. In Green v. Lindsey, 456 U.S. 442 (1982), the United States Supreme Court stated: In this case, appellees have been deprived of a significant interest in property: indeed, of the right to continue residence in their homes. The Green case involved the sufficiency of notice to vacate. The tenant had questioned the validity of posting a notice on the door. Due Process and Equal Protection are not the property of any one group of people, but are the rights of all citizens. In the present case the state has simply lent her hands to landlords by enacting this 1901 statute. It criminalizes a breach of contract.for failure to pay a debt. Criminal sanctions should be as applicable to property line disputes and other breaches of contract as to agreements between landlord and tenant. The weak and the strong do not stand upon “equal terms” when the state is on the side of one or the other. Finally, I wish to concur with the majority on finding that the court prejudicially and erroneously imposed imprisonment of 30 days upon the appellant. It was benevolent of the majority to reduce the penalty to one day. Hickman, J., joins.