Court Opinion

ID: 9578936
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:49:45.455764+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:33:39.582246
License: Public Domain

*411Judge GREENE
concurring in the result.
I
I disagree with any suggestion by the majority that an action in rent abatement somehow differs from an action for breach of warranty for habitability. Rent abatement is merely one of the remedies for breach of warranty of habitability. See Miller v. C. W. Myers Trading Post, Inc., 85 N.C. App. 362, 355 S.E.2d 189 (1987).
II
I agree that in an affirmative action (complaint or counterclaim) by a tenant for breach of warranty of habitability, the tenant who has paid no rent is not entitled to recover as damages the difference between the fair rental value of the premises as warranted and the fair rental value of the premises in unfit condition. Nonetheless, a non-paying tenant would be entitled to recover special and consequential damages, if the trier of fact determined that the landlord breached his statutory obligations under N.C.G.S. § 42-42(a) (1984). However, in defense of a summary ejectment action, a tenant who has defaulted in the payment of rent based on a landlord’s breaches of his obligation to provide fit premises is entitled to an abatement of the rent due to the extent the agreed rent exceeds the fair rental value of the premises in their unfit condition.1 I do not accept that in either situation, an affirmative or a defensive action by a tenant, that the tenant is barred by N.C.G.S. § 4244(c) (1984) (“[t]he tenant may not unilaterally withhold rent prior to a judicial determination of a right to do so”); see Webster’s Real Estate § 69 (“a default in rent payments coupled with a statutory defense for that default is not the same thing as intentional rent withholding”).
Here, the tenant proceeded affirmatively as plaintiff and did not object to the instructions to the jury which did not include special and consequential damages as an element of the damage award. Accordingly, I join with the majority in remanding this cause for amendment of the judgment to exclude any damages for that period of time for which plaintiff did not pay rent.
*412III
I agree with the majority that when “the conditions enumerated in G.S. 42-42(a)(4) are the same conditions which render the premises unfit and uninhabitable [pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 42-44(a)(2)] no written notice is required under the statute.” See Webster’s Real Estate § 67 (when a landlord has actual notice of defects under G.S. 4242(a)(2), no written notice is required). Nonetheless, the tenant must prove that she has either given oral notice to the landlord of the defective condition of the premises or prove that the landlord was aware of the defective condition of the premises. See Cotton v. Stanley, 86 N.C. App. 534, 539, 358 S.E.2d 692, 696, rev. denied, 321 N.C. 296, 362 S.E.2d 779 (1987). As this court noted in the Cotton decision, the landlord’s liability for damages does not arise until “after notice.” Id. Here, I agree with the majority that there was sufficient evidence in the record to support a finding that the landlord had sufficient notice of the defective condition of the premises.

. “It is only after determining the amount of damages that the tenant has suffered because of the landlord’s breach that a net amount of rent owed can be determined.” P. Hetrick & J. McLaughlin, Webster’s Real Estate Law in North Carolina § 70 n.41 (3d ed. Supp. 1989).