70 Mass. App. Ct. 453 | Mass. App. Ct. | 2007
The plaintiff, Homesavers Council of Greenfield
1. Background. Many of the underlying facts are not disputed. The landlord owned Greenfield Gardens, a housing complex that received so-called section 8 Federal rental subsidies
On March 1, 2002, the landlord, without notice to the tenant, terminated the tenant’s section 8 subsidy and transferred that subsidy to another apartment.
However, in April, 2002, the tenant took an unpaid leave of absence from her employment because of depression. She began receiving public assistance, thereby reducing her annual income from $26,135 to $8,292. She accordingly sought a rent reduction to which she would plainly have been entitled had a section 8 subsidy been in place.
On or about June 3, 2002, the tenant, by counsel, informed the landlord that she had not been notified of the termination of the section 8 subsidy, and requested that it be reinstated. On June 11, 2002, the landlord reduced the tenant’s monthly rent from $593 to $575, which was the minimum section 236 rent available. Had the section 8 subsidy not been terminated, the tenant’s share of the rent, given her reduced income, would have been $147 per month. Despite the fact that rent of $575 per month constituted eighty-three percent of the tenant’s income, the landlord neither reinstated the section 8 subsidy
At about the time that the present proceeding commenced, the tenant returned to work, her income increased, and the landlord established a new rent for her unit of $627 per month. Trial was scheduled for December 6, 2002. One day prior thereto, the landlord offered to recalculate the claimed rent arrearage by applying the tenant’s section 8 share of $147 per month for the period of May through September, 2002, rather than the section 236 minimum rent of $575 per month, thus reducing the claimed arrearage to $444.50. On the day of trial, the landlord offered in addition to give the tenant the next section 8 subsidy that became available at Greenfield Gardens, and to collect from her during the interim only an amount equal to what she would have paid had the subsidy already been in place. The offers effectively settled those portions of the case that related to possession of the unit, restoration of the section 8 subsidy, and calculation of the rent arrearage.
After trial, the judge found that the landlord’s actions had wrongfully eliminated an essential feature of the tenancy and thus constituted interference with the tenant’s right of quiet enjoyment in violation of G. L. c. 186, § 14. Apparently applying the criteria of Agis v. Howard Johnson Co., 371 Mass. at
2. General Laws c. 186, § 14: emotional distress. At the outset, the landlord’s argument that the evidence was insufficient to demonstrate the intentional infliction of emotional distress is misplaced. The counterclaim on which the tenant prevailed was not one for intentional infliction of emotional distress, but rather one alleging interference with quiet enjoyment, a statutory violation. See G. L. c. 186, § 14, as amended by St. 1974, c. 192, § 1 (“any lessor or landlord who directly or indirectly interferes with the quiet enjoyment of any residential premises by the occupant . . . shall... be hable for actual and consequential damages or three month’s rent, whichever is greater, and the costs of the action, including a reasonable attorney’s fee”). Having found that the landlord violated the statute by wrongfully transferring the tenant’s section 8 rent subsidy and then subjecting the tenant to eviction proceedings for failure to pay a new, unlawfully calculated rent, a finding not challenged by the landlord, the judge determined that the landlord’s violation caused the tenant emotional distress, and that such emotional distress was com-pensable as reasonably foreseeable consequential damages.
Whether damages for emotional distress may be awarded as consequential damages for a violation of G. L. c. 186, § 14, has not been decided expressly. Both the Supreme Judicial Court and this court have assumed, without saying so directly, that such damages are available. In Simon v. Solomon, 385 Mass. 91, 107-111 (1982), the court determined that an award of damages of $10,000 for a violation of G. L. c. 186, § 14, was redundant in light of a separate award of $35,000 for reckless infliction of emotional distress, but did not question the trial judge’s instruction that actual and consequential damages under G. L. c. 186, § 14, could include any damage resulting from
We see no reason in law or policy why emotional distress, where foreseeable, should not be viewed as a consequence of interference with quiet enjoyment. Nor do we believe that the requirements of the Agis decision relative to common-law claims of intentional infliction of emotional distress must be imported into an analysis of emotional distress as a consequence of a statutory violation under G. L. c. 186, § 14. Negligent conduct, as opposed to wilful or reckless behavior, is all that is required for a violation of the quiet enjoyment statute. See Cruz, Mgmt. Co. v. Thomas, 417 Mass. 782, 789 (1994); Al-Ziab v. Mourgis, 424 Mass. 847, 850-851 (1997). If foreseeable harm follows causally from the negligence, there is no basis for elevating the burden of proof of a single kind of harm (i.e., emotional distress) to that required with respect to a common-law tort where either intentional or reckless behavior must be present. Such an interpretation is inconsistent with the objectives of those remedial landlord-tenant statutes of which G. L. c. 186, § 14, is an example.
With the requirements of Agis out of the way, the judge’s finding that the landlord’s actions caused the tenant emotional distress is unassailable. It takes little imagination to understand that a woman with children living in a subsidized apartment might find anxiety-provoking a threat to put her on the street for failure to pay an unreasonable, erroneously determined rent well beyond her limited financial capacity. The landlord’s contention that the tenant’s emotional distress preceded the § 14 violation is unpersuasive. The judge’s finding that the tenant experienced severe emotional distress when she received the
3. Intentional infliction of emotional distress. While we have held that proof of the Agis factors is not a prerequisite for the recovery of emotional distress damages for violation of G. L. c. 186, § 14 (see part 2, supra), we conclude that the evidence here is sufficient to sustain a finding of intentional or reckless infliction of emotional distress even if the Agis factors are applied. “[Ojne who, by extreme and outrageous conduct and without privilege, causes severe emotional distress to another is subject to liability for such emotional distress even though no bodily harm may result.” Agis v. Howard Johnson Co., 371 Mass. at 144. To recover on this common-law claim, “[i]t must be shown (1) that the actor intended to inflict emotional distress or that he knew or should have known that emotional distress was the likely result of his conduct . . . ; (2) that the conduct was ‘extreme and outrageous,’ was ‘beyond all possible bounds of decency’ and was ‘utterly intolerable in a civilized community’ . . . ; (3) that the actions of the defendant were the cause of the plaintiff’s distress . . . ; and (4) that the emotional distress sustained by the plaintiff was so ‘severe’ and of a nature ‘that no reasonable man could be expected to endure it’ ” (citations omitted).
The landlord argues that it was not foreseeable that its improper termination of the section 8 subsidy would cause the tenant emotional distress, in part because prior eviction proceedings between the parties had been resolved amicably.
The judge’s finding that the landlord’s actions were extreme
The evidence also supports findings that the landlord’s actions caused the tenant’s emotional distress,
4. Attorney’s fees. The tenant has requested an award of ap
Judgment affirmed.
See Wojcik v. Lynn Hous. Authy., 66 Mass. App. Ct. 103, 103 n.2 (2006), for a description of the Housing Choice Voucher (section 8) program.
The landlord did so ostensibly because the section 8 benefit that the tenant was receiving was minimal, and the subsidy would be of greater value to a
The section 236 program provides a subsidy to mortgage lenders so that they will extend financing at a below-market rate to private developers to construct or rehabilitate apartments for low income use. Rents are established at below-market levels because the landlord can pass through to the tenants their reduced financing costs. See Tedford v. Massachusetts Hous. Fin. Agency, 390 Mass. 688, 690 (1984); Volpe Constr. Co. v. First Natl. Bank of Boston, 30 Mass. App. Ct. 249, 260 n.15 (1991).
Even this figure ($593) was excessive. The correct monthly rent for section 236 purposes should have been $575.
The section 236 program operates differently and the rent is not affected by the tenant’s reduction in income.
This presumably resulted from the fact that no other section 8 subsidies were then available.
It is not clear whether the judge actually viewed the Agis standards as establishing the burden of proof with respect to emotional distress damages under G. L. c. 186, § 14. She did not cite Agis in her findings and rulings, and may only have employed certain of its terms (“extreme and outrageous,” “severe emotional distress”) as a way of characterizing the actions of the landlord or the effect on the tenant. If the judge did intend to rule that the tenant was required to prove the Agis elements, we disagree, but her result was correct and we may affirm, albeit on different grounds. See Slocum v. Natural Prods. Co., 292 Mass. 455, 458 (1935).
The judge’s conflation of the tenant’s receipt of the notice to quit and her receipt of the summary process complaint, events that obviously occurred at different times, and with the latter coming when the tenant had largely recovered from her earlier depression, provides no basis for disturbing her finding of causation. The evidence supports a finding that the notice to quit caused the tenant emotional distress. While service of the summary process complaint came later, it may reasonably be inferred that it did not help the tenant’s frame of mind.
The same finding of wilfulness in turn justified the double damages award. See G. L. c. 93A, § 9.
The operative words in the inner quotes were drawn from several sources in which the issue had previously been considered, including the Restatement
The prior dispute was precipitated by a failure by the tenant to pay rent. The landlord commenced summary process proceedings; there was agreement by the parties on a payment plan; and the eviction action was dismissed. The tenant was not deprived of her section 8 subsidy and was never obligated to pay more than thirty percent of her income in rent or arrearages. The circumstances differed considerably from the secret, wrongful termination by the landlord of the section 8 subsidy that took place in the present case, followed by an attempt to enforce an unlawful rent.
To the extent that the landlord argues that the tenant did not pay the section 8 amount as of May 17, 2002, the date of the notice to quit, there was no evidence that (1) the amount was actually calculated for her by the landlord, or (2) the landlord offered to accept that amount of payment by her to dismiss the eviction proceedings. The amount due claimed in the notice to quit ($889.50) was based upon the incorrect rental amount. As the judge noted, a substantial part of the unpaid rent claimed in the summary process summons and complaint ($2,039.50) was also attributable to the overcharging.
While the judge did not make an explicit finding that the landlord’s actions caused the tenant’s distress, the finding is implicit in her decision.
In light of our conclusions above, we need not address the tenant’s claim