The plaintiff landlord sought, by way of summary process, to regain posses-
sion of certain federally subsidized premises that it had leased to the
defendant. The plaintiff had provided the defendant with a federal preter-
mination notice based on the defendant’s nonpayment of her total rental
obligation, which constituted material noncompliance with the terms
of her lease. The notice included a chart detailing a month-to-month
breakdown of the amount of rent that the defendant owed to the plaintiff.
After the defendant failed to tender any payment to the plaintiff within
the time period specified in the pretermination notice, the plaintiff served
the defendant with a notice to quit possession of the premises and,
thereafter, brought this summary process action, seeking immediate
possession thereof. In response, the defendant filed a motion to dismiss
the action on the ground that the plaintiff’s pretermination notice was
defective, and, therefore, the trial court lacked subject matter jurisdic-
tion over the action. The trial court granted the defendant’s motion to
dismiss and rendered judgment in favor of the defendant, from which
the plaintiff appealed to this court. Held that the trial court improperly
dismissed the summary process action on the ground that the plaintiff’s
federal pretermination notice was defective and, therefore, that it lacked
subject matter jurisdiction over the action: the pretermination notice
sufficiently complied with the applicable federal regulations and require-
ments (24 C.F.R. §§ 247.3 and 247.4) governing the termination of a
federally subsidized tenancy based on nonpayment of rent, as the preter-
mination notice provided adequate notice that the defendant’s tenancy
was being terminated on the ground of material noncompliance with
the lease based on her nonpayment of rent, and it set forth that ground
with enough specificity to enable the defendant to prepare a defense
to the summary process action; moreover, this court disagreed with the
trial court’s findings that the purpose of the pretermination notice was
to provide the defendant with an opportunity to cure her noncompliance
with the lease and that the notice did not comply with the applicable
specificity requirements of the federal regulations because it included
nonrent charges, as the regulations contained no language pertaining
to an opportunity to cure and the inclusion of certain additional nonrent
charges did not render the pretermination notice fatally defective.
Argued February 14—officially released September 19, 2017 Procedural History