Court Opinion

ID: 9852504
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:31:54.069304+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:28.825378
License: Public Domain

HOWE, Justice,
concurring:
I concur. I write to more fully explain why I think the Utah Consumer Sales Practices Act (UCSPA) does not apply in this case.
As pointed out in the lead opinion in Wade v. Jobe, 818 P.2d 1006, 1014 (Utah 1991), the UCSPA is modeled after the Uniform Consumer Sales Practices Act, which was drafted by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws and is narrower than some other model consumer protection statutes. The Uniform Act defines a “consumer transaction” as a “sale, lease, assignment, award by chance, or other disposition of an item of goods, a service, or an intangible (except securities).” Id. The Utah Act contains the same definition of a consumer transaction except that it includes “property, both tangible and intangible except securities and insurance.” Utah Code Ann. § 13-11-3(2). In a comment to the definition of a consumer transaction in the Uniform Act, the drafters stated, “On the assumption that land transactions frequently are, and should be, regulated by specialized legislation, they are excluded altogether.” Wade, 818 P.2d at 1014.
In the lead opinion in Wade, this comment was noted but given no effect because our version of the Uniform Act does not contain that comment. So far as this author knows, however, comments by the drafters of uniform acts are not written into the statute when Utah adopts a version of a uniform act but are nevertheless considered relevant when seeking legislative intent. The lead opinion relied upon the fact that the Utah version, as pointed out above, applied to “property both tangible and intangible” and argued that since tangible property can be either real or personal property, it followed that the Utah Act was meant to apply to residential rental leases and agreements. Id.
Versions of the Uniform Act have been enacted in two other states, Ohio and Kansas. The supreme courts in both of those states have held that their versions of the Uniform Consumer Sales Practices Act did not apply to residential lease transactions. Heritage Hills, Ltd. v. Deacon, 49 Ohio St.3d 80, 551 N.E.2d 125,127 (1990) (relying on the drafters’ comment); Chelsea Plaza Homes, Inc. v. Moore, 226 Kan. 430, 601 P.2d 1100, 1104 (1979). Moreover, the Uniform Act was approved by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws and by the American Bar Association in 1970. Unif. Consumer Sales Practices Act, 7A U.L.A. 231 (1985). In accordance with the drafters’ comment that the Uniform Act was not meant to apply to land transactions such as landlord/tenant transactions, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws just two years later in 1972 approved a Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act. Chelsea Plaza Homes, 601 P.2d at 1103. Kansas has enacted versions of both the Uniform Consumer Sales Practices Act and the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act. Id. In Chelsea Plaza Homes, a tenant, in an action by her landlord to evict her, counterclaimed, alleging violations of the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, and averred them to be deceptive practices under the Consumer Sales Practices Act. The court held:
Clearly, the Consumer Protection Act covers a very broad area of transactions; whereas, the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act covers one very specific small area of transactions, and is complete within itself for that area. We therefore must conclude that for all transactions within its purview the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act controls and preempts the field.
Id. at 1104.
Chelsea Plaza Homes was followed in Heritage Hills, Ltd., where the court held that Ohio’s statutes for resolving landlord/tenant disputes excluded application of Ohio’s version of the Uniform Consumer Sales Practices Act. Similarly, in State v. Schwab, 103 Wash.2d 542, 693 P.2d 108, 110 (1985), the court held that violations of Washington’s Residential Landlord Tenant Act do not also constitute violations of its Consumer Protection Act.
*8While Utah has not adopted the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Aet, our legislature in 1990 enacted a somewhat similar but narrower act entitled the Utah Fit Premises Act, Utah Code Ann. §§ 57-22-1 to -6. This act was not considered in Wade because that case arose before passage of the act. The Fit Premises Act contains specific provisions as to a tenant’s rights and remedies when a landlord allows the premises to become uninhabitable such as in the instant case. The Act provides for the tenant to give the landlord written notice to correct and remedy conditions which fall below health and safety standards. The landlord then has the option to (1) refuse to correct the substandard conditions and terminate the rental agreement, refunding to the tenant all unused rent along with any deposits, or (2) remedy the unhealthy or unsafe conditions. Only in the event that the landlord does not timely exercise either option may the tenant then seek damages, injunctive relief, and attorney fees as provided for in the Act.
In sum, I agree with the lead opinion that the specific provisions of the Fit Premises Act dealing with violations of health and safety standards which make rented premises uninhabitable should prevail over the general provisions of the Utah Consumer Protection Act. The latter Act focuses on deceptive and unconscionable sales practices with which we are not concerned in the instant case. We are here concerned only with uninhabitable conditions of the rented premises, not with any deception practiced upon the tenant by the landlord nor with provisions in a lease which are arguably unconscionable. The legislature has clearly spoken in the area of uninhabitable conditions in rented premises and has provided specific remedies in the Fit Premises Act.
STEWART, Associate C.J., and RUSSON, J., concur.