Ayers v. Landow, 666 A.2d 51 (1995)

Citation: Ayers v. Landow, 666 A.2d 51 (1995)
Parent Document: Ayers v. Landow, 666 A.2d 51 (1995)
Jurisdiction: DC (municipal)
Effective Date: 1995-10-02
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2381535/ayers-v-landow/ ↗

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In the Frank Emmet Real Estate case, a tenant informed his landlord that he was temporarily relocating to Colorado, gave him the address there, and indicated the tenant’s intent to return to live in his rented property in Washington. While the tenant was in Colorado, the landlord attempted eviction by posting a summons on the door of the Washington property and mailing a copy of the notice to the Washington address. In this way, the landlord comported with the express statutory requirements for service of summons. The court reasoned, however, that the landlord’s strict adherence to the statute was of a “wooden manner” that the legislature did not intend. Id., 562 A.2d at 136. According to the court, the purpose of § 16-1502, the service of summons statute that was amended at the same time as § 45-1406, the service of notice to quit statute, was to help ensure that a tenant was actually provided with the summons. Thus, where a technical application of the statute would not accomplish this goal, technical compliance would not comport with the spirit in which § 16-1502 was enacted. The court concluded that mailing to Colorado, where the landlord knew the tenant to be — and not the rented premises, as the statute requires — would have been statutorily sufficient. The court stated that “[w]e simply make what we think is a commonsense application of that principle [of mailing as an additional assurance of notice when posting occurs] to the facts here.” Id. at 137.

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