Court Opinion

ID: 9675378
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:51:43.660692+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:33.873513
License: Public Domain

*572ON REHEARING.
Mr. Justice Garwood
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Consideration of the motion for rehearing develops that we were in error as to the amount of the rental overcharge, which petitioner is entitled to recover, and which is $699.96, rather than $174.99. Though the rent is not apportionable for the purposes of petitioner’s claim for “unearned rentals,” which it also sought, doubtless it is the intent of the federal rent control regulations fixing maximum monthly rentals, that, in a case of a year’s prepaid rent like the present, the prepayment shall, for the purposes of those regulations, be treated as if it were made by the month in equal installments. Petitioner actually sought, as a matter of general law, recovery of “unearned rentals” of over $1500, or practically the full amount paid for the lease and, at the same time, sought triple damages and attorney fees under the federal law based on excessive charge of $58.33 per month for the entire lease period. The trial court awarded $1200 on the “unearned rentals” theory, evidently basing it on the fact that the respondent lessor had reentered the premises at the end of the third month of the lease and, evidently to avoid a double recovery, limiting the award of triple damages under the federal law to a sum based on that part of the rent which the court allocated to the first three months. The excess rental, on which the court thus based the triple damages, amounted to $174.99 ($58.33 per month for three months). In seeking to uphold the trial court judgment as rendered, and in connection with its argument on the assign-ability of the claim under the federal law, petitioner, in a supplemental brief submitted prior to our decision, stated that “in any event, on the authority of Basham v. Smith, the judgment of the trial court for petitioner should be affirmed in so far as it awards recovery for the ‘bare overcharges’, $58.33 per month for three months, or $174.99.” Of course, had petitioner foreseen that we would deny altogether its claim for “unearned rentals”, it would have used the figure of $699.96 instead of $174.99 and the words “twelve months” instead of “three months”, since the larger claim would not then have raised a question of double recovery. However, the quoted statement, with our own inadvertance, served to produce the error mentioned.
Our original opinion accordingly stands corrected by substituting the figure $699.95 for that of $174.99 and with this correction, the motion for rehearing is overruled.
Opinion delivered February 14, 1951.