Court Opinion

ID: 9747455
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 15:16:01.110207+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:23.850529
License: Public Domain

SCHWELB, Associate Judge
(dissenting):
In my opinion, the trial judge’s findings in this case are not susceptible of meaningful appellate review. Accordingly, I would vacate the judgment and remand the case for further proceedings.
I.
I think it important to emphasize, at the outset, that Mrs. Wright’s allegations in this case are quite serious. If they are true, then she was compelled to live, for a considerable time, in conditions unsuitable for human habitation. Moreover, according to Mrs. Wright’s testimony, the Hodges knew about at least some of these conditions from the beginning of the tenancy, but consciously and deliberately refused to do anything about them.
Mrs. Wright moved into the apartment in December 1991. Twenty-one months later, on September 27, 1993 — the day on which this case was tried — Mrs. Wright testified that
the sewer is still coming up in the toilet, as it was; the bathtub has still not been fixed; and the violations that I consider important to me, which is sewage, because I haven’t eaten in that apartment since July, I haven’t washed any dishes in there since July because it’s unsafe and unsanitary. So I was told that if I was under such bad circumstances, that I should move out. *1107But no one has any reason to live in the type of situation that exists in that whole building....
Mrs. Wright further testified that she had brought the defective conditions to the attention of Mrs. Hodges immediately after she moved in. According to Mrs. Wright, however,
[Mrs. Hodges’] response was, well, Mrs. Wright, you know that you’re not paying but X number of dollars, and if there’s anything wrong, you should be able to do it [your]self.
Mrs. Wright thus alleged, in essence, that because the rent for her unit was modest, the Hodges consciously and deliberately gave her the Hobson’s choice of either living with the violations or of making her own repairs as best she could.
Mrs. Wright was entitled to have these troubling allegations considered seriously and, I suggest, in some detail. It was the judge’s obligation, in my view, to go beyond generalities and to make “a meaningful attempt to come to grips with the difficult factual issues raised by the record.” Eilers v. District of Columbia Bureau of Motor Vehicles Servs., 588 A.2d 677, 685 (D.C.1990). Rule 52(a) of the Superior Court’s Civil Rules “means there must be findings on material issues. Failure to do so requires remand.” Tauber v. District of Columbia, 511 A.2d 28, 28 (D.C.1986).
The judge did not, however, take up the specific factual issues raised by Mrs. Wright, nor did he directly address her credibility. Rather, he ruled in conclusory fashion that the Hodges had not “done anything wrong” and that there had been no breach of the implied warranty of habitability. The judge then completed his oral decision with a little homily which may have led Mrs. Wright to wonder how seriously her case was being taken:
I find that the housing inspector is on top of this situation, has been on top of this situation, is apparently going to continue to be on top of this situation since we all die — until we all die, and so I am — I take a lot of comfort in that, a lot of comfort that everybody is going to be looking out for everybody in this case.
For the reasons set forth below, this simply will not do.
II.
Although the judge’s focus at the bench trial was on the summer of 1993, when the inspector first examined the apartment, the most significant factual issue, in terms of relief to which Mrs. Wright might be entitled, related to events that substantially predated that summer. Mrs. Wright testified, as we have seen, that serious housing code violations existed from the day she moved into the unit, and that Mrs. Hodges deliberately refused to do anything about them and treated the tenancy, in effect, as an “as is” arrangement. Her testimony on these matters was very definite and very specific; it was either true or fabricated, but it could hardly have been the result of a mistake.
Mrs. Hodges denied, without elaboration, that Mrs. Wright had complained about conditions at the time that she moved in to the apartment. Mrs. Hodges, however, was not asked about, nor did she admit or deny, the alleged conversation in which she was said to have told Mrs. Wright that repairs were the tenant’s own responsibility. The question whether Mrs. Hodges made the remarks which Mrs. Wright ascribed to her appears to me to hold the key to this case, and I do not see how the merits can be fairly determined without dealing with that question directly.
It is, of course, possible that Mrs. Wright was not telling the truth regarding the condition of the apartment at the beginning of the tenancy, and that she invented out of whole cloth the conversation in which Mrs. Hodges allegedly refused to do anything about the condition.1 If Mrs. Wright did not fabricate her story, however, then she was entitled to some abatement for a year and a half or more, for the implied warranty of habitability cannot be waived. Javins v. First Nat’l *1108Realty Corp., 138 U.S.App.D.C. 369, 379-80, 428 F.2d 1071, 1081-82, cert. denied, 400 U.S. 925, 91 S.Ct. 186, 27 L.Ed.2d 185 (1970).
In his oral decision, the judge did not address at all the condition of the apartment during the first year and a half of Mrs. Wright’s tenancy, nor did he mention Mrs. Hodges’ alleged refusal to make repairs or the explanation that Mrs. Hodges allegedly gave Mrs. Wright for that refusal. The judge did not award Mrs. Wright any abatement, and I suppose that one could therefore infer that the judge “must have” disbelieved Mrs. Wright’s testimony on these subjects, even though he did not say a word about it.
I suggest, however, that the decisive factual issue was far too specific and far too well-defined to warrant a disposition of it which would require the appellate court to guess at what the judge “must have” meant.2 To hold, as my colleagues do, that findings as perfunctory as those which the judge made here “necessarily imply” that Mrs. Wright’s account was false appears to me to eviscerate the principle, acknowledged by the majority, that the court must “state sufficient findings of fact and conclusions of law to permit meaningful appellate review.” Maj. op. at 1105-1106 (quoting United States Fidelity & Guar., Co. v. Kaftarian, 520 A.2d 297, 299 (D.C.1987)). If it is enough for the judge to state that the landlords did not violate the implied warranty of habitability and did nothing wrong, then there is no incentive, Kaftarian and like cases notwithstanding, to address and resolve the hard factual issues on which the ultimate decision is based. My colleagues acknowledge that “more detailed findings might have been preferable.” Maj. op. at 1107. I think they were essential.
Even if the judge disbelieved Mrs. Wright’s testimony that she apprised Mrs. Hodges in 1991 of serious housing code violations, the Hodges should at least arguably have known about some of the violations— e.g., the defective condition of the exterior locks — because these defects may have been readily noticeable irrespective of whether Mrs. Wright complained. If Mrs. Wright had to live in an apartment which could not be locked, and if the Hodges knew or should have known about this circumstance, then the rental value of the premises was surely reduced at least in some measure. The judge made no finding directly addressing what the Hodges knew or should have known about the defective exterior door, or about any other violation.
III.
Turning to the “routine” violations, the judge made no specific finding as to what they were, or how long they had existed, or when the Hodges knew or should have known about them, or whether they had been abated.3 In fact, the judge denied Mrs. Wright any rent reduction, although it was undisputed that many non-emergency violations existed at the time of the inspection, and even though, at Mr. Hodges’ request, the apartment had not been re-inspected between August 2, 1993 and the day of trial eight weeks later. Cf. Novak v. Cox, 538 A.2d 747, 751 (D.C.1988).
It may well be that the judge, after having examined photographs of the conditions complained of, viewed the non-emergency violations as “de minimis.” The housing inspector described them as “just your basic routine wear and tear.” If that is what the judge intended, however, he made no such finding, explicitly or, in my view, even implicitly. Moreover, although “one or two” de *1109minimis violations would not entitle a tenant to a reduction in rent, Javins, supra, 138 U.S.App.D.C. at 380 n. 63, 428 F.2d at 1082 n. 63, there were numerous “routine” violations in Mrs. Wright’s unit, and it is not at all clear to me that the words “one or two” in Javins can be so readily disregarded. Counsel for Mrs. Wright argue, not unreasonably, that “the extensive list of housing code violations written by the inspector ... amply portray[s] an apartment in far more severe shape than [one] suffering from ‘routine wear and tear.’ ”
The record in this case establishes that there were numerous non-emergency housing code violations in the unit for a protracted period of time, and that they had not been abated at the time of trial. In my opinion, the trial judge did not adequately explain why, under these circumstances, no abatement was appropriate.
IV.
The majority acknowledges that more detailed findings might have been preferable, but presumes “that the trial judge knows and applies the proper legal standards” and that “[t]rial court judgments come to us with a presumption of correctness.” Maj. op. at 1107 (citations omitted). I do not challenge the existence of these presumptions, but I think that they have been amply rebutted in this case by the judge’s own words. I agree with counsel for Mrs. Wright that
Javins and its progeny do not stand for the proposition that rent will not be abated if a housing inspector “is on top of the situation” or will “continue to be on top of the situation.” Nor do these cases support a ruling that the court may ignore housing code violations because they may be abated at some point in the future. Rather, the law of this jurisdiction requires that the court make some adjustment in the rent in failure to pay rent cases, when defendants like Ms. Wright counterclaim for a reduction of rent based upon [demonstrated and substantial] housing code violations. Javins, [138 U.S.App.D.C. at 380], 428 F.2d at 1082; Winchester Management Corp. [v. Staten], 361 A.2d 187, 190 (D.C.1976); Hsu [v. Thomas], 387 A.2d [588], 589 (D.C.1978); Cooks [v. Fowler, 147 U.S.App.D.C. 213, 213-14], 455 F.2d 1281, 1281-82 (1971).
To be sure, the trial judge found, with little elaboration, that the Hodges had not violated the implied warranty of habitability. If the trial judge actually applied to this case the legal principles implicit in his oral ruling, however, then the ultimate finding cannot be sustained. “Findings of fact which result from a misapprehension as to the applicable law ... lose the insulation of the ‘clearly’ erroneous rule.” In re Application of L.L., 653 A.2d 873, 880 (D.C.1995) (citation omitted).
For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent.

. There is some limited implicit corroboration for parts of Mrs. Hodges' account, for the housing inspector did find numerous housing code violations when he examined the premises in 1993, several of them of an emergency nature.

. There is an additional reason to question whether the judge gave any consideration at all to the 1991 events. The alleged conversation between Mrs. Wright and Mrs. Hodges about repairs either occurred or did not occur. If it did not, then Mrs. Wright must have fabricated it. If the judge believed that Mrs. Wright was deliberately lying under oath, then I question whether he would have ended the trial with his ostensibly warm words about how glad he was that "eveiybody is going to be looking out for everybody in this case.”

. As the housing inspector explained, the Hodges had requested, and had been granted, an extension, and the premises were to be reinspected approximately one week after the trial. Accordingly, the judge could not and did not find, at the time he ruled in the Hodges' favor, that the violations had been abated. The .pro se litigants did not ask the judge to keep the record open for evidence as to the results of the reinspection and, unfortunately, the judge did not do so sua sponte.