Court Opinion

ID: 9753273
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:06:02.942505+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:33.015563
License: Public Domain

OBERLY, Associate Judge,
concurring.
I join in the result reached by the court in this case, holding that the landlord’s appeal from the trial court’s refusal to modify its order so as to release funds that the tenants are paying into the court registry while the underlying matter is still pending before the Rental Housing Commission must be dismissed for lack of appellate jurisdiction. I agree with the majority that landlords must satisfy the same two-part test established for tenants in McQueen v. Lustine Realty Co., 547 A.2d 172 (D.C.1988) (en banc), which requires tenants seeking review to show that absent an interlocutory appeal they will suffer “serious, perhaps irreparable, consequence[s],” and that the order sought to be appealed can be “effectually challenged” only by immediate appeal. Id. at 176 (quoting Carson v. American Brands, Inc., 450 U.S. 79, 84, 101 S.Ct. 993, 67 L.Ed.2d 59 (1981)). I also agree with the majority that B.F. Saul has not made that showing on behalf of landlords as a class.
I write separately, however, to emphasize what I believe the court is not deciding in this opinion. Specifically, I believe it is open to B.F. Saul (or any other individual landlord) to attempt to show, perhaps in a new filing in this suit or perhaps in another suit, “serious, perhaps irreparable, consequence[s]” from the failure to modify a protective order that can only be “effectually challenged” by immediate appeal. At some point — and one might wonder whether the more than five years the proposed rent increase in this case has been under consideration by the Rental Accommodations and Conversion Division of the District of Columbia Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs does not reach that point — the pendency of unresolved administrative action surely may visit “serious, perhaps irreparable, conse-quenee[s]” upon a landlord that can only be “effectually challenged” by immediate appeal. Certainly, the length of time this matter has been pending suggests a threat to the landlord’s statutory entitlement to a maximum 12% rate of return on investment. D.C.Code § 42-3502.12(a) (2001); see also Graham v. Lanier Assocs., 19 A.3d 361, 363 (D.C.2011). At some point, the piling up in the court registry of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars indisputably owed to the landlord, out of all proportion to what is in dispute (here, an $81 per month rent increase), until a swamped and perhaps bureaucratic administration finally resolves a tenant’s challenge ought to be renewable in this court.