Court Opinion

ID: 9636783
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:42:38.738502+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:49.380294
License: Public Domain

QUINN, Associate Judge
(concurring).
I agree with the majority that the trial court’s findings were erroneous and that the tenant was entitled to a thirty-day notice. I agree also that a landlord has the right to enter his tenant’s premises in order to inspect for waste and to make the necessary repairs to prevent waste. But I do not believe that the Rent Act should be used as the basis for these rights. The Act itself provides for the assertion of such basic property rights as substantially altering and remodeling, and of selling. But nowhere does it give to a landlord the right to make repairs. Further, though the Act has been in force since 1942, there has been no judicial interpretation of it which would bestow such a right on a landlord. As Judge Hood has stated, the general rule is that a landlord has no right to enter leased premises for the purpose of making repairs. I believe that this rule is sound, as it prevents the landlord from unnecessarily or arbitrarily interrupting a legal tenancy. But there is a well-founded modification to the rule, namely, that the landlord may enter the premises to make repairs which will prevent waste.1 I feel that it is on this rule, and not on an interpretation of the Rent Act, that we should base the landlord’s right to enter. T would also emphasize that this right of entry extends only to repairs for the prevention of waste,2 and not to all repairs which the landlord would desire to make. I agree with the majority that this right would be meaningless unless it was accompanied by. an implied right of entry for the purpose of inspecting for waste.
In the instant case these facts should be mentioned. The owner had not been in Dunnington’s apartment for at least eight years. In the apartment across the hall from Dunnington’s the floor beams had rotted out, and the floors in the kitchen and bathroom had to be replaced. Also the window sills were in a state of total disrepair and many of the window panes were out. Some of these conditions also existed in the two upper apartments. For a tenant to allow these conditions to exist and to refuse to permit the landlord to correct them would certainly be waste. It would be entirely reasonable here for the owner to inquire if the same conditions that existed in the other apartments existed in defendant’s apartment, and as she had not been in his apartment for a period of eight years, she had no way of knowing to the contrary. I believe that the owner should be allowed to inspect for waste, and to make the necessary repairs to prevent it, but I do not feel that the Rent Act is the proper foundation on 'which to base these rights.

. 51 C.J.S., Landlord and Tenant, § 370; 32 Am.Jur., Landlord and Tenant, § 196; Rammell v. Bulen, Ohio App., 80 N.E. 2d 167; Flanders v. New Hampshire Sav. Bank, 90 N.H. 285, 7 A.2d 233; Lauer v. Palms, 129 Mich. 671, 89 N.W. 694, 58 L.R.A. 67.

. The word “waste” has a well-defined legal meaning. Cf. Vol. 44, Words and Phrases, “Waste.”