Section 45-1561

Citation: Section 45-1561
Parent Document: Habib v. Thurston, 517 A.2d 1 (1986)
Jurisdiction: DC (municipal)
Effective Date: 1986-10-30
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1995493/habib-v-thurston/ ↗

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In the present case, however, the tenant prevailed — the lease remained in effect— and thus the payments into the registry, as it turned out, theoretically retained their status as “rent” rather than becoming merely a fund subject to a claim for unliq-uidated damages. See at 13 n. 16. The trial court, therefore, absent an extension of McNeal, would not necessarily have had to consider alleged code violations, since rent was a contracted amount, unlike the damages attributable to a holdover tenant.12 This formalistic difference, however, between the court’s award of unliquidated “damages” or contractual “rent,” depending on the outcome of the landlord’s action, should not determine whether a tenant has a right to assert code violations at a McNeal hearing in a notice case; there is no principled basis for granting the tenant a lesser right in a case where she prevails than in one where she loses.

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