Court Opinion

ID: 9588326
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:32:55.687656+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:00:58.127961
License: Public Domain

Sprouse, Justice,
concurring:
I respectfully concur with the results of the well-written opinion of the majority. I would reach this conclusion not only on the basis of the rule announced in syllabus points 4 and 5, but for the additional reason that the bonding scheme provided by our statute for an appeal from a justice of the peace judgment for unlawful entry and detainer violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
The Supreme Court of the United States in Lindsey v. Normet, 405 U.S. 56, struck down a similar bond requirement of the State of Oregon. The Oregon statute dealt with bonds required on appeal from a judgment on a forceable entry and wrongful detainer action similar to the West Virginia statute. It is true as indicated in the majority opinion that the formula and amount required for an appeal bond under the Oregon law were different from those contained in the West Virginia statute. There is likewise no disagreement with the majority’s interpretation of the rule in Lindsey v. Normet, supra. That statute was held not to afford equal protection to unlawful detainer appellants because there was no reasonable relationship between the bond and the plaintiff’s damage or the rent to accrue during the appellate process.
The majority decision finds a reasonable relationship between the bond required by the West Virginia statute (Code, 1931, 50-15-2) and plaintiff’s damage and the rent to accrue during the appellate process. I disagree with that conclusion. The application of the statute to the present defendants, the relators in this proceeding, *740demonstrates its basic inequities and lack of constitutional fairness. The defendant Charles Reece is the father of six children residing with him and his wife at their Charleston Housing Authority apartment. Reece is normally employed but due to temporary unemployment was in arrears in the payment of rent. The rent was in the amount of $86.00 a month which was subject to being reduced by the Charleston Housing Authority in the event of unemployment. Reece claimed he owed $234.00 in back rent. The Charleston Housing Authority obtained a judgment for $300.00. In order to appeal, the defendants were required to post a bond in an amount double the judgment plus one year’s rent at the rate of $86.00 per month — $600.00 plus $1,032.00, for a total of $1,632.00.
As these facts demonstrate, the bond requirement does not bear a reasonable relationship to the plaintiff’s damage and security for rent during the appellate proceedings. Therefore, I believe it is violative of the rule established by the Supreme Court in Lindsey. This is not to say that landlords should not be protected in their right to rent enforcement — they should be. The bond requirement statute, however, provides for no flexibility to the exigencies of specific defendants. Some parts of the bond formula considered individually might be fair— for example double the $300.00 amount to protect a $300.00 judgment. However, the fairness of the bond requirements cannot be judged in separate increments of $300.00 plus $300.00 plus $1,032.00. The defendants were required to provide the total amount of $1,632.00 for a $300.00 judgment and future rent regardless that their rent might be reduced under the rules of the Housing Authority due to unemployment and regardless of any finding as to probable litigation time.
I do not agree that the two cases cited in the majority opinion are dispositive of the due process of law issue raised in this case. State ex rel. Moats v. Janco, 154 W.Va. 887, 180 S.E.2d 74, holds that a justice of the peace’s lack of training does not make his holdings violative of due process. Ortwein v. Schwab, 410 U.S. 656, 93 S. Ct. 1172, *741holds that a fee requirement for indigents to appeal an adverse welfare administrative decision does not violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. These represent only two aspects of the basic unfairness implicit in the governmental treatment of the present defendants’ attempt to secure economic and social justice.
It is true that the Fourteenth Amendment does not guarantee to every citizen access to our courts for all disagreements as to their respective rights. However, in Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U.S. 371, the Supreme Court of the United States held that access to our legal system is guaranteed when (1) the litigants’ interests are fundamental; (2) resort to the court is the sole path to relief; and (3) government control over the relief is exclusive.
Boddie involved an indigent’s attempt to obtain access to a divorce court without payment of a fee and the right of a divorce was held to meet the above criteria. In United States v. Kras, 409 U.S. 434, 93 S. Ct. 631, it was decided that bankruptcy was not such a fundamental interest as to require access to the courts without any fee restriction. In Patterson v. Warner, 371 F. Supp. 1362 (S.D. W.Va.), it was held that relief from an automobile sales contract did not constitute in the defendant such a fundamental interest as to bring him within the Boddie due process rule. The Boddie decision held that the right to access to a divorce court “is the exclusive precondition to the adjustment of a fundamental human relationship”— marriage. Boddie v. Connecticut, supra at 383.
If access to our courts is necessary to adjust a marriage by breaking it up, it would seem to me to be more imperative that opportunity to preserve a marriage and family life be afforded by access to the courts. That is the fundamental human relationship involved here— the efforts of a father and mother to provide a home for their family in the face of economic adversity. This does not connote the bare commercialism of a sales contract nor the pure economic considerations of a bankruptcy *742action, rather this attempt to preserve family life through court action touches most of the social concepts of a democracy. It is also true due to the circumstances of public housing and the indigent position of the defendants that resort to the courts was defendants’ sole path to relief and that government control over the relief was exclusive.
The fact that defendants had a hearing before a justice of the peace, however, presents a more difficult problem. Once it is determined that a litigant has a Fourteenth Amendment right of access to a court, the hearing there, of course, must be “at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner * * * appropriate to the nature of the case”. Boddie v. Connecticut, supra at 378, citing Armstrong v. Manzo, 380 U.S. 545; Mullane v. Central Hanover Tr. Co., 339 U.S. 306.
The defendants contend that due to the justice of the peace’s lack of training he was not able to consider a defense available to them established by rules of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is a factual contention not sufficiently documented in the record for a proper resolution on appeal. However, where a defendant as here has a right to access to the courts and, in addition, there is a factual showing of a denial of a meaningful hearing before a justice of the peace, this should certainly be a denial of due process of law where because of his impecunious condition the defendant has no opportunity to proceed to another court where he could obtain his meaningful hearing.
I am authorized to state that Justice Haden joins in the views expressed in this concurring opinion.