Court Opinion

ID: 9753081
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 18:56:21.390049+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:29.367089
License: Public Domain

TERRY, Associate Judge,
dissenting:
With all respect, I cannot join my colleagues in judicially repealing a statute that has been on the books since 1901. By holding that D.C.Code § 45-1561 (1981) gives appellee the right to remain in possession of the apartment at issue, the majority is reading D.C.Code § 45-222 (1981) right out of the Code. I am not willing to do this; therefore I dissent.
Section 45-222 provides:
An estate at will is one held by the joint will of lessor and lessee, and which may be terminated at any time, as herein elsewhere provided, by either party; and *1171such estate shall not exist or be created except by express contract: Provided, however, that in case of a sale of real estate under mortgage or deed of trust or execution, and a conveyance thereof to the purchaser, the grantor in such mortgage or deed of trust, execution defendant, or those in possession claiming under him, shall be held and construed to be tenants at will, except in the case of a tenant holding under an unexpired lease for years, in writing, antedating the mortgage or deed of trust.
Twice this court has held, construing section 45-222,1 that the eviction safeguards under previous rent acts did not apply “where the occupant of premises was the person whose mortgage or deed of trust had been foreclosed_” Surratt v. Real Estate Exchange, Inc., 76 A.2d 587, 588 (D.C.1950); accord, Simpson v. Jack Spicer Real Estate, Inc., 396 A.2d 212, 214-215 (D.C.1978). I believe that these precedents control the instant case and require us to reverse the trial court’s dismissal of the VA’s complaint for possession.
Appellee Valentine, of course, is the former tenant of a mortgagor who defaulted on his loan, not the defaulting mortgagor himself. But that is no reason to exclude her from the operation of section 45-222. The proviso in that section applies not only to a defaulting mortgagor but to “those in possession claiming under him.” That these words include lessees of the mortgagor is clear from the exception which section 45-222 makes for “a tenant holding under an unexpired lease for years, in writing, antedating the mortgage or deed of trust.” If lessees of a defaulting mortgagor were not persons “claiming under him,” there would be no need for this exception. Valentine does not fall within the exception, and thus she must be included within the general language of the proviso, which makes her a tenant at will.2 As a tenant at will, she is entitled to only thirty days’ notice under D.C.Code § 45-1403 (1981).
Appellee argues that section 45-222 has been “superseded” by the provisions of the Rental Housing Act of 1980,3 of which section 45-1561 is a part. This is but another way of saying that the later statute repealed the earlier one by implication. I cannot accept such an argument. “It is a cardinal principle of construction that repeals by implication are not favored. When there are two acts upon the same subject, the rule is to give effect to both if possible.” United States v. Borden Co., 308 U.S. 188, 198, 60 S.Ct. 182, 188, 84 L.Ed. 181 (1939) (citations omitted). “The courts are not at liberty to pick and choose among [legislative] enactments, and when two statutes are capable of co-existence, it is the duty of the courts, absent a clearly expressed [legislative] intention to the contrary, to regard each as effective.” Morton v. Mancari, 417 U.S. 535, 551, 94 S.Ct 2474, 2483, 41 L.Ed.2d 290 (1974). I believe it is possible to give effect to both section 45-222 and section 45-1561 by recognizing the former as a pre-existing law which the City Council allowed to stand unchanged when it enacted the Rental Housing Act of 1980.
We are dealing here with a prior statute of limited application and a later statute of broad general scope. The proviso in section 45-222 deals only with the particular situation of a person in possession of property holding over after a foreclosure and sale, whereas the Rental Housing Act is an attempt by the City Council to cover the waterfront in regulating the rental housing market in the District of Columbia. In such a situation a presumption arises that *1172the legislature knowingly allowed the earlier enactment to stand as an exception to the later one:
[T]he legislature is presumed to have known of the existence of prior special or particular legislation, and to have contemplated only a general treatment of the subject matter by the general enactment. Therefore, where the later general statute does not present an irreconciliable conflict, the prior special statute will be construed as remaining in effect as a qualification of or exception to the general law.
1A SUTHERLAND; STATUTES AND STATUTORY CONSTRUCTION § 23.15 (4th ed.1972) (footnotes omitted); see, e.g., Goodwin v. District of Columbia Board of Education, 343 A.2d 63, 65-66 (D.C.1975).
Although there is no legislative history or other evidence of legislative intent regarding the continuing validity of section 45-222, there is indirect evidence that the City Council did not intend it to be superseded by the Rental Housing Act. D.C. Code § 45-1661 (1984 Supp.) provides:
The purposes of this chapter favor resolution of ambiguity by the hearing officer or a court toward the end of strengthening the legal rights of tenants or tenant organizations to the maximum extent permissible under law. If this chapter conflicts with another provision of law of general applicability, the provisions of this chapter control.
Appellee relies on this section as a statement of legislative intent to nullify section 45-222 when it appears to conflict with the later-enacted section 45-1561. In fact, however, section 45-1661 supports the contrary argument of appellant. The reference to “this chapter” in section 45-1661 is to the Rental Housing Conversion and Sale Act of 1980,4 not the Rental Housing Act of 1980. Section 45-1561 is not a part of “this chapter.”5 Because these two statutes— the Rental Housing Act and the Rental Housing Conversion and Sale Act — were enacted at almost the same time, I can only conclude that the City Council made a conscious choice to omit from the Rental Housing Act a section comparable to the “Statutory Construction” section of the Conversion and Sale Act, i.e., section 45-1661. The absence of such a provision from the Rental Housing Act, when it would have been a simple matter to include it, convinces me that the Council did not intend section 45-1561 to supersede or override section 45-222.
I would therefore hold that section 45-222 must be given effect as a pre-existing exception to section 45-1561, following established principles of statutory construction, and that under section 45-222 appellee Valentine became a tenant at will when the foreclosure sale resulted in a transfer of title to the purchaser. Consequently, she is entitled under section 45-1403 to only thirty days’ notice before being evicted.
The decision of the majority in this case will have an immediate impact on banks and other lending institutions in the District of Columbia. It will turn any foreclosing lender who acquires title to property that happens to have a residential tenant into an unwitting — and often unwilling— landlord, subject to the stringencies of the Rental Housing Act. The result could very well be a drying up of available mortgage funds for the purchase of rental properties in the District. I cannot believe that this was the intent of the City Council when it enacted the Rental Housing Act. Since my colleagues disagree, the only recourse of *1173the lending institutions is to seek corrective legislation from the Council, clarifying the status of lessees in possession of foreclosed property and the rights and duties of foreclosing lenders.

. The present section 45-222 was codified in previous editions of the Code as section 45-822. The language, however, has remained unchanged since it was enacted in 1901.

. I would hold that she became a tenant at will by operation of law, as of the date on which title to the property passed to the purchaser after the foreclosure sale. The fact that the purchaser was also the foreclosing lender is immaterial to Valentine’s status.

.D.C.Law 3-131, 28 D.C.Reg. 326 (1981).

. D.C.Law 3-86, 27 D.C.Reg. 2975 (1980).

. For this reason the majority’s reliance on the Rental Housing Commission’s decision in Ficke v. Washington Federal Savings & Loan Ass’n, No. T.P. 11,062 (May 4, 1984), is ill-advised. The Ficke opinion is based primarily on D.C. Code § 45-1661, which sets forth a rule of statutory construction applicable only to "this chapter.” The Commission not only ignores or overlooks the fact that "this chapter” does not include section 45-1561, but also erroneously asserts that section 45-1661 is part of the Rental Housing Act of 1980 when in fact it is not. Thus Ficke is of little or no value as precedent; it demonstrates merely that the Commission has misread the District of Columbia Code.