Court Opinion

ID: 9784872
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 20:56:30.901572+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:00.606056
License: Public Domain

RUIZ, Associate Judge,
dissenting:
I cannot agree with the court’s conclusion that in order to protect a tenant’s right to purchase under the District of Columbia Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (“TOPA”), a tenant’s expression of interest in purchasing the property must be received by the owner within the thirty-day period prescribed in the statute, rather than sent by the tenant during that time. The inevitable result of the majority’s conclusion is that a tenant who elects to mail the expression of interest by first-class mail — as is permitted — will necessarily have less than the full thirty days allowed by the statute, which says that “the tenant shall have thirty days to provide the owner and the Mayor ... with a statement of interest.” D.C.Code § 42-3404.09(1) (2001) (emphasis added). If the tenant must assure that the owner receives the mailed notice within the thirty-day period, however, the tenant will not have had the full period to consider and respond to the offer, but must make allowance for the time it takes for the mail to be delivered. How much time must be allowed is not within the control of the tenant. In this case, for example, the difference between “send” and “receipt” means that the tenant lost — by two days — the right created by TOPA to purchase the home in which he had lived as a tenant for over thirty years. That result is contrary to TOPA’s purpose and the intent of the Council that TOPA be interpreted to favor tenants’ rights.
At a minimum, the case should be remanded for further proceedings. Here, in, addition to mailing his expression of interest in buying the home eighteen days after he received the owner’s offer of sale — well within the thirty-day period — the tenant shortly thereafter sent a signed purchase contract that incorporated the terms in the owner’s offer of sale ($400,000 price, 5% down, 60 days to settlement) and made a $20,000 deposit in escrow, all demonstrating his bona fide intention to complete the purchase. The record does not show corresponding bona fide compliance with TOPA by the owner. To the contrary, the owner’s offer of sale was made grudgingly because the owner did not want to sell the property to the tenant, and the owner claimed (without corroboration) that it took two weeks for the tenant’s mailed notice to reach him in nearby suburban Maryland. On this record, even accepting the court’s interpretation of the statute, there is a material issue of fact in dispute — the date the owner received the tenant’s mailed expression of interest in purchasing the property — that requires a remand to the trial court for further proceedings and findings of fact.
1. TOPA must be interpreted to favor the tenant’s right to purchase.
The court concedes, as it must, that because TOPA uses the word “provide” in connection with the tenant’s expression of interest to purchase the property, the statute is not clear on its face as to whether the tenant must ensure receipt or simply send the expression of interest within the thirty-day period that the statute prescribes. See ante at 1130 (“To be sure, our task would have been simpler if the Council had used the word ‘deliver’ instead of ‘provide’ ... ”). The court, therefore, is forced to choose among dictionary sub-meanings of the word “provide” (e.g., “furnish” rather than “submit”) and draw analogies to other parts of the statute (and even different statutory schemes) to conclude that when the statute says the “ten*1136ant shall ... provide” an expression of interest to purchase within thirty days, it meant to require that the “owner must receive” the notice within the thirty-day period. As I pointed out in my dissent from the division opinion, however, the TOPA statute uses the word “receipt” advisedly in several provisions. Tippett v. Daly, 964 A.2d 606, 615 (D.C.2009) (Ruiz, J., dissenting). Indeed, the word “receipt” is used twice in the very section at issue in this case, D.C.Code § 42-3404.09(1) (“Upon receipt of a written offer of sale from the owner ..., or upon the Mayor’s receipt of a copy of the written offer of sale, whichever is later, the tenant shall have thirty days to provide .... ”). We must assume that if it had intended to require receipt by the owner before the end date of the thirty-day period, the Council would similarly have used the word “receipt” as it did, in the same statutory section, in identifying “receipt” by the tenant of the owner’s offer of sale as the starting date for the thirty-day period to respond.1 It did not; instead, it chose to use “provide.” The Council’s use of “provide” either is purposeful in imposing a less stringent obligation on tenants than on owners, or, at a minimum, is ambiguous.
What the Council has done without equivocation is tell us how the court should interpret any ambiguity in the statute. In the TOPA statute itself is a rule of interpretation that requires that the tenant be given the benefit of the doubt where the court has to determine whether “provide” is to be read as imposing an obligation on tenants to ensure receipt by a date certain, on pain of losing the right to purchase created by the statute. D.C.Code § 42-3405.11 states:
Statutory construction.
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....
D.C.Code § 42-3405.11. Under the express terms of the statute, therefore, the court is duty-bound to resolve any ambiguity in the term “provide” in favor of the tenant “to the maximum extent permissible under law.” See Janes v. State, 350 Md. 284, 711 A.2d 1319, 1328 n. 9 (1998) (“As we held more than 70 years ago ... the Legislature may ‘declare in the body of the act the construction to be placed thereon, and the courts are bound by such construction, and all other parts of the act must yield.’ ” (citing Montgomery County Motor Co. v. State, 147 Md. 232, 127 A. 637, 638 (1925))).
The mandate to resolve any ambiguity in favor of the tenant requires us to interpret “provide” to mean “send,” and not, as the court does, to require that the tenant “deliver” or ensure receipt by the owner. It should be obvious that it is beneficial to tenants to have more time, not less, to consider and respond to an offer of sale. The court’s attempt to persuade that its interpretation “could benefit tenants as well as owners,” ante at 1134, is belied by the arguments made to the court: both the tenant in this appeal and the Chief Tenant Advocate of the District of Columbia Office of the Tenant Advocate (who urged the court to rehear the case en banc in order to reverse the division’s interpretation that the full court now affirms) disagree that the court’s interpretation redounds to the benefit of tenants.2 Moreover, the court is *1137simply wrong when it says that interpreting the word “provide” to require receipt by the owner (rather than mailing by the tenant) will benefit tenants because other sections of the statute, §§ 42-3404.03(4) and -3404.09(2), also use the word “provide” when imposing an obligation on owners to make certain information concerning the offer and the housing accommodation available to tenants. See ante at 1132-33. What the court ignores in making that assertion is that, as already discussed, TOPA expressly states that the tenant’s thirty-day period to respond begins “upon receipt” by the tenant of the offer of sale. D.C.Code § 42-3404.09(1). TOPA also provides that once the tenant expresses interest in purchasing and the “reasonable period to negotiate” is commenced, a day is added to the negotiation period for every day that the owner delays in “providing” requested information. See § 42-3404.09(2). The TOPA statute, in other words, in its design leans in favor of preserving the tenant’s right to purchase, by ensuring that the time periods allowed to the tenant for responding to an offer of sale and subsequent negotiation are not infringed by the owner’s delay. Instead, the court is interpreting the statute in the manner which it thinks will result in the most efficient procedure. See ante at 1132-33. Even if the court’s scheme is a better one, however, it is not our job as judges to “fix” what we think is faulty legislation, but to interpret the statute that was enacted and implement it so as to effectuate legislative intent.3
The statutory language dispensing with use of the word “receipt” in favor of “provide” when speaking of the tenant’s expression of interest to purchase, when coupled with the statutory mandate to interpret any ambiguity in TOPA’s use of the word “provide” in favor of “strengthening the legal rights of tenants,” D.C.Code § 42-3405.11, should be more than sufficient to establish that the Council intended the word “provide” to mean “sent.” But the Council has taken a further step to remove all doubt that the court’s contrary conclusion is mistaken. Promptly after the division opinion interpreting the statutory language “tenant shall have thirty days to provide” to mean “owner must receive within thirty days” was issued on February 5, 2009, see 964 A.2d 606, the Council took action to tell the court that it had misinterpreted TOPA. By March 3, 2009, an emergency bill (D.C. Bill 18-170) and a temporary bill (D.C. Bill 18-171) were introduced with a Resolution “[t]o declare the existence of an emergency with respect to the need to clarify ... that actual receipt of the letter by the housing provider or the Mayor within the relevant time frame is not required.” See Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Preservation Clarification Emergency Declaration Resolution of 2009, 56 D.C.Reg. 2120 (Mar. 3, 2009). Criticizing the division opinion by referring to “Dis*1138trict law [that] requires that the court interpret any ambiguities in the act” in favor of tenants, the Resolution “clarif[ies] the Council’s intent that tenants have the full thirty days provided by law to express an interest in purchasing their unit following an offer of sale from the landlord.” Id. The Resolution, which took effect “immediately,” was adopted unanimously. Id. at 2121. After two other emergency and temporary bills, the legislative “clarification” was enacted on May 19, 2010, and became effective as permanent legislation on July 23, 2010. See Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Preservation and Clarification Amendment Act of 2010, 57 D.C.Reg. 4510 (May 19, 2010).4 Now comes the court, several months after the Council’s clarifying amendment has been adopted as permanent legislation, to declare that the Council actually intended the opposite of what it has so emphatically and consistently expressed.
In light of the clarifying amendment, the majority recognizes that its opinion is unlikely to have any impact beyond precluding the right to purchase of the appellant in this case. That would have been reason enough to reconsider the wisdom of according en banc imprimatur to the division’s split opinion. Beyond the particular statutory provision (and litigant) in this case, however, there is other mischief the full court’s opinion could visit on future cases that require interpretation of TOPA or other statutes that contain a similar rule of statutory construction. See, e.g., D.C.Code § 42 — 1903.02(f) (stating that the section authorizing condominium declarant control “shall be strictly construed to protect the rights of the unit owners”). What is at the core of my dissent is the proper role of the court vis a, vis the legislature— whether it be the Council of the District of Columbia or the Congress of the United States — when it comes to interpreting a statute. Our role as judges is to effectuate legislative will. Without a doubt there are cases when courts must fill in blanks or choose between alternative interpretations when confronted with ambiguous or inadequate statutory language, whether the ambiguities and inadequacies are inadvertent or the result of legislators’ inability or unwillingness to see eye-to-eye. Courts faced with such a task must do the best they can with the interpretive tools available to them, with the knowledge that their interpretation can be overridden if the legislature considers that the court got it wrong. But this is not one of those difficult cases. Where the legislature has spoken clearly in a matter within its competence, there is no need for judges to use proxies for legislative will. In this case, the legislature enacted a provision in TOPA telling the court that when a choice is to be made, it must tilt in favor of tenants. Moreover, when a division of the court failed to do so, the legislature told the court in no uncertain terms that it got it wrong in the division opinion, passed a Resolution, and consecutive emergency, temporary and, most recently, permanent legislation to correct it. Yet the full court persists in its contrary view of what the statute means. Due regard for the legislature’s express intent compels me to dissent.5
*11392. Even under the court’s interpretation, there remains a disputed issue of material fact that requires a remand for further proceedings.
In addition to my disagreement with the court’s interpretation of the statute against the interest of tenants, I take issue with the court’s conclusion that the case should be remanded for entry of an order dismissing the tenant’s complaint. See ante at 1134. That resolution is premature as there remains a disputed issue of fact that is material under the court’s interpretation: when did the owner receive the tenant’s notice expressing an intent to purchase the property? The tenant testified that he received the owner’s offer of sale on April 30, 2001, and TOPA clearly says that is when the thirty-day period began. D.C.Code § 42-3404.09(1). That date is not disputed. As the court notes, at trial the parties stipulated that although the date that the tenant mailed the notice of intent to purchase (May 18, 2001) is agreed, the date on which the owner received the tenant’s notice is disputed. See ante at 1137 n. 3. The owner’s receipt, pursuant to the court’s interpretation, must have occurred within the thirty-day period, or by May 30, 2001. However, there has been no fact-finding on the disputed date of the owner’s receipt of the tenant’s expression of intent to purchase. That is because it was irrelevant to the manner in which the trial judge (incorrectly) interpreted the statute; as the trial judge said, the owner’s testimony “that he received the [tenant’s] statement on June 2, 2001 has no hearing [on the tenant’s] manifestation of acceptance” (emphasis added). Yet, under the court’s interpretation, this date is critical to whether the tenant provided timely notice under TOPA. In a similar case where the trial judge misinterpreted a statutory time period and did not make fact-findings required by a correct interpretation, we have said that the case should be remanded to the trial court “with instructions for such further proceedings and factual development as might be appropriate to permit the court to apply the correct interpretation” of the statute. See Barnhardt v. District of Columbia, 8 A.3d 1206 (D.C.2010).
The court dispenses with the usual remand, however, by saying that the tenant has not presented evidence disputing the owner’s testimony as to when the owner actually received the tenant’s notice. This is another instance in which the court, contrary to the statutory mandate to “favor resolution of ambiguity” in favor of strengthening the tenant’s rights, D.C.Code § 42-3405.11, imposes a burden on the tenant to counter an uncorroborated assertion by the owner that is suspect on its face.
Even though the tenant has not presented direct evidence of when the owner received the notice of intent to purchase, there are inferences a fact-finder could make based on the evidence of record that could well lead to a rejection of the owner’s claim that he did not receive the tenant’s notice until two days after the thirty-day period had expired. First, it is undisputed that the owner’s offer of sale to the tenant was mailed on April 28, 2001; the tenant testified that he received it two days later, on April 30. Second, it is also undisputed that the tenant responded by mailing his notice of intent to purchase on May 18, 2001, by certified mail, well within the thirty-day period. Third, the owner says that he did not receive the tenant’s letter until two weeks later, on June 2. That is a disputed fact. Two weeks is a long time for a letter to be delivered from an address within the District of Columbia to an address in adjoining suburban Maryland, particularly when a letter going between the same two addresses at approximately the same time is delivered within two days, not two weeks. There is other *1140evidence in the record that could make a fact-finder question the owner’s claimed date of receipt. Even though the owner sent an offer of sale to the tenant, the owner has made it perfectly clear to the trial court that he did not wish to sell the house to the tenant, but wanted to move in while he renovated the house where he lived in Bethesda, Maryland. The owner also had taken the position that, as a matter of law, the property was not subject to TOPA’s tenant right of purchase because, even though the owner of the property is a trust, its sole beneficiary wished to occupy the property himself and TOPA does not give the tenant a right to purchase when the tenant is evicted for the owner’s personal use of the property. The unresolved factual dispute as to the two-week delayed delivery date when the owner claimed receipt of the tenant’s notice, when considered in the context of a tenant who has exhibited a genuine and promptly-expressed desire to purchase his home of thirty-plus years and an owner who does not hide the fact that he does not wish to sell to the tenant, makes it particularly inappropriate for the appellate court to conclusively decide the rights of the parties without a remand for further proceedings and fact-findings in the trial court.
Finally, there is a procedural motion to submit additional evidence that the trial judge could well want to reconsider on remand for further proceedings. TOPA requires that copies of the owner’s offer of sale and tenant’s expression of interest in purchasing be sent to the Mayor. See D.C.Code 42-3404.09(1). At trial, the owner claimed that he sent a copy of the offer of sale to the Mayor, as required by TOPA, but there was no written verification of a filed and date-stamped copy. The tenant also claimed that he had taken a copy of his letter of interest to purchase to the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, (DCRA) the same day that he sent it to the owner. However, a representative from the DCRA that administers TOPA testified that nothing had been filed — by the owner or the tenant — with respect to the property. The owner has argued on appeal to the division and to the en banc court that the trial court erred in crediting the tenant’s testimony that he had filed with DCRA. The owner argues that whether the tenant filed with DCRA is a “factual dispute,” emphasizing the lack of corroborating evidence. After trial but before the trial judge decided the case, the tenant sought to reopen the record to introduce evidence that corroborated his testimony, proffering a copy of the notice of intent to purchase he filed with DCRA, bearing a date-stamp of May 18, 2001, the same day that the tenant’s notice was sent by certified mail to the owner. That means that a copy of the tenant’s notice to the owner was actually received within the thirty-day period (as defined by the court) by one of the two recipients required by the statute. The trial court denied the tenant’s request to reopen the record. Although the judge did not explain her reasoning, most likely it was because she deemed it irrelevant in light of her determination that the tenant’s notice had been timely provided to the owner. But the documentary corroboration of the tenant’s testimony of timely filing with DCRA, when contrasted with the apparent lack of corroboration concerning the owner’s alleged filing of the required offer with the Mayor, could have a bearing on the fact-finder’s acceptance or rejection of the owner’s testimony that it took two weeks (until two days after the deadline) for the owner to receive the tenant’s notice. Because the factual record remains unresolved as to a material fact in dispute, on remand, the trial court might wish to reconsider the tenant’s motion to reopen, as it could shed light on that factual question that now becomes relevant under a correct understanding of the law.
*1141For these reasons, because the court incorrectly interprets the statute contrary to legislative intent and because the court is prematurely terminating the litigation by failing to remand for further proceedings and necessary fact-finding, I dissent.

. And, as the majority opinion recognizes, the notice provision applicable to housing accommodations with five or more units, D.C.Code § 42-3404.11, also uses the words "deliver” and "receipt” — not the ambiguous "provide.”

. The Office of the Tenant Advocate warned the court of the risk of the court's interpretation. ("[B]y extinguishing tenant's rights for reasons beyond their control, the court invites creative mischief on the part of the District’s *1137more unscrupulous housing providers to ensure that very outcome.”).

. The court’s analogy to the rule of lenity used in criminal cases, relying on Callanan v. United States, 364 U.S. 587, 596, 81 S.Ct. 321, 5 L.Ed.2d 312 (1961), is not apt in this context. The rule of lenity is a judicial construct, "in favorem libertatis, to resolve the ambiguity,” id. at 596, 81 S.Ct. 321, in those cases ”[w]hen Congress leaves to the Judiciary the task of imputing to Congress an undeclared will....” Id. at 596 n. 9, 81 S.Ct. 321 (quoting Bell v. United States, 349 U.S. 81, 83, 75 S.Ct. 620, 99 L.Ed. 905 (1955)). But here, the legislature has not left its will "undeclared”; to the contrary, it has expressly declared in the statute itself that any ambiguity is to be resolved in favor of strengthening tenants’ rights. The more apt reference is to D.C.Code § 23-112, which provides a legislatively-mandated rule of interpretation (in favor of consecutive sentences) when a sentencing court does not "expressly provided otherwise.”

. In the amended statute the Council requires that the tenant's expression of interest is to be provided either "by hand or by sending certified mail” within the thirty-day period. By specifying "sending certified mail” (rather than confirming delivery by "return receipt”) the legislation emphasizes that the mailbox rule applies because it is the sending by the tenant, not receipt by the owner, that TOPA requires if the notice is not made by hand. The choice is left to the tenant.

. The only further step the Council could have taken would have been to make the clarifying amendment retroactive in application, thus effectively cutting off the court's interpretive judgment altogether.