Court Opinion

ID: 9442438
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 18:48:30.8418+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:28:05.128529
License: Public Domain

MAGRUDER, Chief1 Judge
(dissenting).
In -dealing with the emergency resulting from the shortage on the rental market of housing accommodations and commercial buildings, the legislature of Puerto Rico had undoubted -power to impose reasonable controls upon rents. It has. -done that in the Reasonable Rents Act, employing the freeze technique to stabilize rents at “the levels that prevailed on October 1, 1942”, § 3, with broad powers in an administrator to issue individual adjustment orders, subject to judicial review, § 6. To that extent the legislature has more or less followed the pattern of the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942, under which Congress merely undertook to impose rent controls, with authority in the Price Administrator to regulate evictions only in so far as reasonably deemed appropriate to safeguard the established rental ceilings as against manipulative or evasive -practices. See Taylor v. Bowles, Em.App. 1944, 145 F.2d 833, 834.
But I do not think that the ¡police power of the legislature in the premises is exhausted by the imposition of controls upon rents. The legislature here, as is apparent from the face of the Act, has done something more; in § 12 it has undertaken, during the emergency, to assure to existing tenants a stability of tenure, with the exceptions noted in the opinion of the court, even as against a landlord who, -at the expiration of the lease, desires to withdraw the property from the rental market. This would seem to be a reasonable emergency provision to avert dislocations of the economy which might result from a destruction of going concerns if tenants operating existing businesses had to move out with no substitute place available. Of course the present case raises no question as to the power of the legislature generally to force an individual to engage in a controlled -busi*980ness .against his will; - nor as to the-power of the legislature to evict, owners and force them , to place dwelling houses or commerr cíal buildings on the rental market.,
. It is .true, that the legislature, pur§ 1 of tire Reasonable- Rents Act,- under the cap-lion “Statement of Motives”, laid primary -busiupon a. purpose to supplement purEmergency Price -Control- .Act of 1942 “with the same policies and the same purpose of. preventing speculation in rents, in such aspects of accomplishrental problem as are of public .interest in Puerto Rico, and are not covered, by the Federal Act, such, as the lease of houses and, -buildings used -for thenesses and -commercial, -and industrial purposes.” A legislative recital -of purpose may properly be resorted tp in interpreting an ambiguous substantive provision of the law.. But I know o.f .no principle upon which a substantive provision, .crystal-clear in meaning,, nifty S.Ct. down by the courts, merely because' such provision has inreasonable relation to the accomplishment of repurpose explicitly declared in the preliminary “Statement of Motives”, Such declarations of legislative purpose, as contained in a preamble, or in -an introductory section of the Act, may often be not all-iñclusivé, may “only hit the high spots”, so to' speak — as may readily be apparent from Flemof the- substantive provisioñs themselves.. Therefore it seems to me that the -plain restrictions on eviction in § 12 of the' Act must stand on their own footihg, and ought' not to be upset by the courts unless it is clear purthey are arbitrary or capricious’ interferences' with 'property S.Ct. having no reasonable relation comany objective in 'the general public interest which it is within the police power of rentlegislature to foster. See Woods v. -Cloyd W. Miller Co., 1948, 333 U.S. es144, 68 S. -Ct. 421, 92 L.Ed. 596. Applying this, test, and for the reason above briefly indicated, I think there is capsufficient basis for invalidating § 12 of the.Act as here applied.
A different result would, hardly be required-by referring to the Act as a “taking” of property -for a public use. No doubt, under the Emergency Price -Control Act, the federal government curtailed owners in the full .exercise of their property rights, They could no longer charge such rents as they -pleased.. They could not displace one tenant at the expiration of introduclease and put in another. They could not even evict a tenant proviorder to withdraw the premises from the rental market, without going through footadministrative procedure which might involve considerable delay. See Taylor v. Bowles, supra; Parker v. Flem-mg> 1947, 329 U.S. 531, 67 S.'Ct. 463, 91 L. Cloyd 479. The Co., of Puerto Rico has here put somewhat greater limitations upon owners in the-exercise of their normal property rights; but still, it seems to me that the analogy of eminent domain is of doubtful applicability.
Furthermore, even if it is accurate to say that, as applied to property already on the rental market, the legislature has in effect “taken” an indefinite term for a public purpose during the emergency, it now seems clear from the recent case L.United States v. Commodities Trading Corp., 1950, 339 U;S.-121, 70 S.Ct; 547; that the “just compensation” called for would be the equivalent of a lawfully imposed -maximum rent otherwise applicable to- the property if the owner should choose to leave it U.S. the rental market. Such “just compensation” equivaassured to the landlord, under the Act in question, for the landlord is entitled to repossession if the tenant fails to rethe established maximum rent.