Section 1808

Citation: Section 1808
Parent Document: McHugh v. Santa Monica Rent Control Board, 777 P.2d 91 (1989)
Jurisdiction: California (state)
Effective Date: 1989-08-17
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1156663/mchugh-v-santa-monica-rent-cont... ↗

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Applying the “substantive limitations” prong of the test set out ante, page 372, we conclude treble damages, although authorized by the Charter Amendment, may not constitutionally be imposed by the Board. First, we note that administrative agencies regularly exercise a range of powers de*379signed to induce compliance with their regulatory authority (e.g., imposition of fines or penalties, awards of costs and attorney fees), and there is no reason to believe that such options would be insufficient here. (Indeed, we observe that after the award in this case, the Charter Amendment was revised to delete the Board’s power to award such damages—see ante, footnote 2.) Most significantly, however, we believe that the power to award treble damages in the present context poses a risk of producing arbitrary, disproportionate results that magnify, beyond acceptable risks, the possibility of arbitrariness inherent in any scheme of administrative adjudication.48

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