Douglas v. Kriegsfeld Corp., 884 A.2d 1109 (2005)

Citation: Douglas v. Kriegsfeld Corp., 884 A.2d 1109 (2005)
Parent Document: Douglas v. Kriegsfeld Corp., 884 A.2d 1109 (2005)
Jurisdiction: DC (municipal)
Effective Date: 2005-10-13
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1472683/douglas-v-kriegsfeld-corp/ ↗

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We would agree that, unless the requested accommodation gave adequate assurance that the apartment would be cleaned up promptlyand offered a reasonable prospect for its staying cleanthe health and safety exception would likely justify the tenant's eviction. In this case, however, the trial court did not give "accommodation" the required consideration. The court's emphasis on the health and safety exception, rather than on the tenant's request for accommodation, was influenced by its perception of the tenant's "apparent" refusal to allow others to help with the cleaninga perception enhanced, perhaps, by the fact that the tenant had been eluding counsel and had not shown up for trial.[31] As a result of this perception of an uncooperative tenant, the court concluded "almost" as a matter of law that accommodation would not work and thus that the "health and safety" exception precluded a reasonable accommodation defense. This hedging language of the court ("apparent," "almost") was not raised to the level of a concrete finding of fact and thus left room for further inquiry into the potential for accommodation. This is especially true because (as we shall see below) the tenant was a subject of ongoing intervention by the D.C. government's Adult Protective Services (APS), in addition to the services of an attentive lawyer. Furthermore, the court itself acknowledged that "we would have to speculate as to whether [the tenant] would allow these folks in to clean her apartment" (emphasis added)hardly a finding that she would not do so. Finally, at the pretrial hearing, the court did not question counsel's proffer that the District government, through APS, would be willing to clean the apartment if the landlord agreed to allow the tenant to remain there. And the court heard tenant's counsel acknowledge that eviction would be warranted if the apartment did not remain clean (through continued government intervention). Implicit in this proffer and concession was the idea that as long as the apartment remained "clean and sanitary," the tenant would be entitled to extension of the stay and eventual dismissal of the landlord's action for possession. Nonetheless, in its ruling the court concluded to a virtual certainty that no reasonable accommodation was realistically available. In doing so, the court did not come to grips with how thoroughly a tenant's request for accommodation must be exploredfirst by the landlord, then by the courtbefore a forfeiture order is lawful.

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