Judge: Fair Rent Can Hear Retaliation Cases

A state judge ruled that the Fair Rent Commission doesn’t have to worry about stepping on the court’s toes when hearing retaliation complaints filed by tenants against landlords suing to evict them.

State Superior Court Judge Walter Spader, Jr. handed down that separation-of-powers-clarifying decision in the case Juana Valle v. City of New Haven Fair Rent Commission.

His March 9 ruling reversed a Fair Rent Commission decision from last May that dropped a tenant’s retaliation complaint because of a related ongoing eviction case. It also clarified a contested understanding between legal aid and city attorneys about how city fair rent proceedings dovetail with eviction cases filed in state court.

The upshot: The city’s Fair Rent Commission, which is a state-empowered local body charged with cracking down on rents deemed ​“harsh and unconscionable,” can hear retaliation complaints at the same time that the courts are overseeing related eviction, or ​“summary process,” matters. 

“Accordingly, the Court finds that the plaintiff was entitled to adjudication of the retaliation portion of her complaint, and the Commission did not consider the evidence or any substantive issues regarding that portion of the complaint,” Spader wrote in his decision in this appeal case. ​“It, therefore, improperly dismissed that portion of the compliant procedurally. The decision of the Commission is vacated and the case is remanded to the Commission to hold a hearing consistent with this opinion and the Court’s decision on the earlier motion to dismiss.”

Valle told the Independent she is ​“happy and proud of the change in the law even though” she personally did not benefit from the change, as she has subsequently moved from her Maltby Place apartment. She is ​“happy to know it will help other people not to go through what” she went through.

All of this dates back to a controversial decision that the Fair Rent Commission made nearly a year ago in a two-complaint case filed by a Maltby Place tenant against her East Haven landlord.

Valle and legal aid attorney Amy Marx appeared before the commission in May 2022 in part to push back on the landlord’s proposed rent hike from $1,000 to $1,250 for Valle’s family’s three-bedroom apartment. That proposed rent hike was to include a new $150 monthly pet fee. 

The Fair Rent Commission heard Valle’s fair-rent complaint, and ruled that the landlord — Silverio Lucero — could raise the rent by $100 per month, and could charge a one-time $150 pet fee.

That settled the rent-related matter.

But that wasn’t the only complaint Valle had filed with the commission.

Valle and Marx also tried to get the Fair Rent Commission at that time to weigh in on a separate retaliation complaint filed by the tenant against her landlord. In that matter, the tenant alleged that her landlord had violated state and local law by filing an eviction lawsuit against her less than six months after she first approached the Fair Rent Commission with her fair-rent complaint.

Following the advice of then-city Assistant Corporation Counsel Blake Sullivan — who has subsequently left his city job for a position with the state attorney general’s office — the Fair Rent Commissioners voted to not hear Valle’s retaliation complaint. Why? Because, as Sullivan cautioned, the same retaliation allegation involving the same tenant and landlord was currently being considered by a state judge in an ongoing eviction case. Sullivan saw this as a potential conflict between the a municipal administrative body and the judicial branch — and he pointed out that the housing court’s decision on such matters take precedence, and the Fair Rent Commission cannot and should not intervene.

While the Fair Rent Commission does have the authority to hear retaliation complaints, Sullivan said during the May 2022 hearing,​“once a summary process action has been filed with the Superior Court, with the housing session, the housing session has exclusive jurisdiction over those claims.”

The commissioners agreed, and declined to hear Valle’s retaliation complaint. 

Soon thereafter, Valle and Marx appealed.

Either / Or? Both / And?

Over the course of several months of court filings, Marx and her legal aid colleague Dan Burns argued that the Fair Rent Commission definitively does have jurisdiction over retaliation complaints — even if, especially if, a landlord has filed an eviction lawsuit against a tenant.

“The Fair Rent Commission must have jurisdiction over retaliation claims such as the one at issue here in order to fulfill its mission and function properly,” Marx wrote in an August 19 brief.

“The Fair Rent Commission exists to adjudicate rent disputes. When a tenant files a fair rent complaint, the Commission orders the landlord to not start an eviction — in order to prevent a landlord from punishing the tenant for filing a claim — and provides a remedy for a violation of such prohibition (i.e., an order to the landlord to cease and desist the eviction, with fines for violation of such order). The Fair Rent Commission’s decision to decline jurisdiction over a retaliation complaint when a summary process action is filed charts a road map to all landlords for how to avoid the fair rent process — upon a tenant’s filing of a fair rent complaint and a fair rent commission sending out a notice to the landlord to not commence an eviction, the landlord should file an eviction in direct violation of the fair rent commission’s orders not to commence an eviction and evict the tenant in retaliation for filing the fair rent complaint. This strips a fair rent commission of its powers, turning an order of a municipal agency into a voluntary request and causing a chilling effect on tenant use of such commissions, fearing that the filing of a fair rent complaint will prompt a retaliatory eviction and knowing that the commission is powerless [to] stop such retaliatory evictions.”

Then-city attorney Sullivan responded on Sept. 14 with a motion to dismiss the appeal, arguing that the issue was now moot because the landlord had withdrawn the eviction lawsuit in question. (The landlord subsequently filed a second eviction lawsuit against the same tenant.)

And in a Sept. 16 brief, Sullivan detailed the city’s support for the upholding of the Fair Rent Commission’s decision — reiterating many of the same arguments he put forward at the original May 2022 hearing.

“Once Ms. Valle’s landlord commenced a separate summary process action with the Superior Court Housing Session,” Sullivan wrote, ​“the FRC no longer had the authority to hear her retaliation complaint or issue any order interfering with the court case. Although the appellant may argue that the FRC’s and Superior Court’s authority can be exercised separately to achieve distinct, nonconflicting results, that is simply not the case. The State’s and New Haven’s laws describing when a landlord’s acts are retaliatory largely overlap, such that a summary process action and a retaliation complaint filed in parallel forums would require the tribunal — whether the FRC or the Superior Court, to make the same legal determinations based on the same set of facts.”

This is such a problem, Sullivan continued, because it violates the separation of powers of two different branches of government.

“A review of what enforcement would actually entail demonstrates two major problems, either one of which should defeat Ms. Valle’s appeal,” the city attorney wrote. ​“First, holding that the FRC can order a landlord to withdraw a summary process action or fine them for pursuing it is incompatible with the separation of powers doctrine because it privileges a local ordinance concerning summary process and retaliation over the Superior Court’s powers, expressly granted by the state legislature, to address and resolve those same issues. Second, holding that a tenant can simultaneously assert the same claims on the same facts and seek the same remedy in two different forums would potentially lead to conflicting results, the resolution of which would unnecessarily waste judicial resources.”

Fair Rent Commissions Play A "Vital Role"

In a Nov. 4 decision turning down the city’s motion to dismiss and a March 9 decision overturning the Fair Rent Commission’s ruling, Judge Spader pointed to the rising statewide importance and functional legislatively defined independence of Fair Rent Commissions as he worked his way towards sending Valle’s retaliation complaint back to the local body.

“While the Court believes the plaintiff’s statement that by dismissing this appeal ​‘landlords will have a clear road map – to file retaliatory evictions to punish tenants for filing fair rent cases and ruin the fair rent system which exists in New Haven and which the state legislature seeks to extend across the state’ is overly broad and a misrepresentation of the overwhelming majority of landlords who act appropriately and do not abuse the system,” Spader wrote on Nov. 4, ​“the exact scenario that occurred in this case (a second eviction action was brought right after the dismissal of the first) is a frequent fact pattern in Housing Court. It is more than a possibility that [a] scenario like this could occur, it is reasonably likely with parties engaged in a contentious housing relationship, such a situation will occur again, if not to Ms. Valle then to others similarly situated.”

He continued: ​“This issue is also one of public importance as Fair Rent Commissions being actively involved on behalf of landlords and tenants is oftentimes the only means to resolve many important local housing issues. The importance of such Commissions in resolving disputes is a high priority issue to the legislature as well, which proactively expanded the availability of Commissions across the state.” On that grounds, Spader ruled, the substantive matters at the center of this appeal are not ​“moot” — and therefore the case should not be dismissed.

Then, on March 9, Spader formally sided with the tenant and legal aid lawyers, and ordered that the retaliation complaint be sent back to the Fair Rent Commission to be heard.

“The Court wrote an extensive review of the case [in] adjudicating the motion to dismiss and found that the Commission had jurisdiction over the issues raised by Ms. Valle and that her claims were not moot as relief was available under state statutes and local ordinances,” Spader wrote. 

“Parties before a Commission are entitled to an actual hearing on their issues and a full adjudication before the Board. Fair Rent Commissions provide a vital role for landlords and tenants, and that importance is underscored by the legislature’s mandate to increase access to such Commissions statewide in its last legislative session.”

In a Thursday phone interview with the Independent, Marx heralded the judge’s decision as upholding independent powers of Fair Rent Commissions. In order for such commissions to function, and in order for New Haven’s to continue to be a role model for such commissions statewide, they have to be able to issue cease-and-desist orders, Marx said.

“It appeared that this body of primarily non-lawyers was concerned to do something that felt new to it, and in refusing to exercise the jurisdiction that had been granted to it, the commission was undermining the very system so many people were working hard” to support.

“With this decision,” Marx continued, ​“the law has now been clarified that the Fair Rent Commission has jurisdiction over cease and desist orders.”