Douglas v. Kriegsfeld Corp., 884 A.2d 1109 (2005)

Citation: Douglas v. Kriegsfeld Corp., 884 A.2d 1109 (2005)
Parent Document: Douglas v. Kriegsfeld Corp., 884 A.2d 1109 (2005)
Jurisdiction: DC (municipal)
Effective Date: 2005-10-13
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1472683/douglas-v-kriegsfeld-corp/ ↗

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Accordingly, we cannot say that the February 20 letter failed as a matter of law to be a “request” for a “reasonable accommodation.” It supplied enough indi-cia of a plan to cure the lease violation, with intervention by the government and accommodation by the landlord, for a reasonable jury to find that the landlord had been obliged under the Fair Housing Act to respond promptly by “opening] a dialogue” with the tenant to determine whether an accommodation was feasible and would offer a reasonable possibility of curing the lease violation. From the evidence addressed at the pretrial hearing, a jury could also find that counsel for the landlord failed to engage in discussion with the tenant’s counsel until approximately two weeks before trial. Such a finding would eliminate any basis for concluding as a matter of law that the tenant’s request for a reasonable accommodation had been presented too late. Indeed, a jury could reason that if the landlord had promptly responded in February, as the law required, and asked for more detail, the ensuing negotiations between the parties, including the role of the D.C. government, presumably would have revealed whether accommodation was a realistic possibility, and thus might well have resolved the matter — or at least created a record of the parties’ best efforts to do so — before the trial date arrived in June.

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