Martin v. Howard County

WILNER, Chief Judge. We are concerned here with whether, in an action brought by a county under Md.Code Real Property art., § 14-120, to evict a tenant for maintaining a nuisance, the tenant is entitled to a jury trial. Section 14-120 was enacted in 1991 to address concerns expressed by citizens’ groups over the adverse effect of drug trafficking in their communities. 1 Among other things, the section defines and declares as a nuisance certain property, including privately owned residential buildings, used for the purpose of illegally administering, manufacturing, distributing, or storing controlled dangerous substances or paraphernalia. It authorizes certain persons and organizations, including the county attorney, to bring an action under Md.Code Cts. & ³³⁴ JucLProc. art., § 4-401, to abate the nuisance, and, in subsections (e) and (f), it provides for certain remedies that the court may order in such an action.

Section 14-120(e) states generally that the court “may issue an injunction or order other equitable relief whether or not an adequate remedy exists at law.” Subsection (f) affords three more specific remedies, two of which are pertinent here. Subsection (f)(1) provides: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, and in addition to or as a component of any remedy ordered under subsection (e) of this section, the court, after a hearing, may order a tenant with knowledge of the existence of the nuisance to vacate the property within 72 hours.” Subsection (f)(2) allows the court to grant a “judgment of restitution or the possession of the property to the owner” if the owner and lessee are parties to the action and a tenant “has failed to obey an order under subsection (e) of this section or paragraph (1) of this subsection.” The Legislature directed that this action be disposed of quickly. Subsection (j) requires that the action be heard in the district court within 14 days after service of process on the parties. Subsection (l) directs that any appeal be filed within 10 days after the date of the order of judgment and that the appeal be heard very promptly. 2 THE FACTS Appellant and one Van Albert Carroll rented a townhouse in Columbia from Columbia Housing Limited Partnership ³³⁵ (CHLP).

The lease is not in the record; we know only that the rent was partially subsidized by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The fair market rental value of the townhouse was $467/month; appellant paid only a fixed percentage of her income toward that rent, however, and the Government paid the balance. On December 1, 1993, the police observed Carroll come out of the townhouse, make contact with a police informant, drop an objeet on the ground, make contact with another person, and then return to the house. Six days later, the police raided the house and found a plastic bag containing 3.2 grams of cocaine and eight vials with a white powder residue.

Appellant and Carroll were arrested and charged with possession of cocaine and possession with intent to distribute cocaine. On February 28, 1994, Howard County filed a complaint in the district court against appellant, Carroll, and CHLP, alleging that appellant and Carroll had knowingly used the property for the distribution and storage of a controlled dangerous substance and controlled paraphernalia and that the property was therefore a nuisance within the meaning of § 14-120. The county asked the court to order appellant and Carroll to vacate the property within 72 hours after a hearing on the matter, to grant CHLP restitution of possession, and to grant such further relief, including costs and attorney’s fees, as may be appropriate. Appellant promptly demanded a jury trial, asserting that the amount in controversy, measured by the amount claimed and the value of her right to continued possession of the property, exceeded $5,000.

After initially striking the demand, the court reconsidered and, over the county’s objection, transferred the case to the Circuit Court for Howard County. In the circuit court, the county moved to strike the request for jury trial or, in the alternative, to advance the case. On April 26, 1994, the court denied the motion to strike the jury trial request, concluding that the case was, in effect, an eviction action involving a person otherwise entitled to indefinite subsidized housing. Though not cited in the brief hand ³³⁶ written order, the court no doubt had in mind the decision of the Court of Appeals in Carroll v. Housing Opportunities Comm’n, 306 Md. 515 , 510 A.2d 540 (1986), discussed in more detail later in this Opinion.

There then ensued a paper war over requests by both sides for discovery. On September 28, 1994, the county filed a complaint for injunctive relief, which essentially repeated the allegations and requests made in the district court complaint, and a motion for summary judgment. Even before appellant could answer the complaint, the court denied the request for immediate injunctive relief. The order doing so, if there was one, is not in the record extract; the docket entry indicates a finding that the county would suffer no immediate, substantial, or irreparable injury.

Trial of the case, before a jury, was scheduled for January 9, 1995. On the morning of trial, however, the court sua sponte “revisited” the county’s motion to strike the jury trial request and remand the case to the district court. The county asserted that the action was essentially one for injunctive relief to abate a nuisance, which was equitable in nature and for which there was no right to a jury trial. It sought to distinguish the instant case from that in Carroll v. Housing Opportunities Comm’ n, supra, 306 Md. 515 , 510 A.2d 540 , on the ground that this was not an attempt to evict a tenant for breach of lease or for holding over.

Appellant responded that, if the county wanted only some form of injunctive relief under § 14-120(e), she would strike her request for jury trial. She complained, however, that the demand for eviction within 72 hours made this an eviction case, not just one for injunctive relief. Accordingly, she insisted on her right to a jury trial. The court found the county’s argument persuasive and thus struck its previous orders, granted the county’s motion to strike the jury trial request, and remanded the case to the district court.

This appeal ensued, in which appellant contests that ruling and also certain rulings relating to discovery. ³³⁷ DISCUSSION Appellant’s claim is founded, ultimately, on Maryland Declaration of Rights, art. 23, which, in pertinent part, declares that “[t]he right of trial by Jury of all issues of fact in civil proceedings in the several Courts of Law in this State, where the amount in controversy exceeds the sum of five thousand dollars, shall be inviolably preserved.” We consider this Constitutional mandate, first, in light of Carroll v. Housing Opportunities Comm’ n, supra, 306 Md. 515 , 510 A.2d 540 . Carroll , in the words of the Court of Appeals, concerned “the right to a jury trial in an action by a public housing authority to recover possession of a rental unit from a tenant in a federally funded public housing complex.” Id. at 517 , 510 A.2d 540 . Ms. Carroll, the tenant, paid $76/month toward the rent for a townhouse. The balance of the rent was paid by the Government.

It was not clear what the fair market rental value of the townhouse was, but there was some evidence that it was over $400/month. The lease required that tenants not engage in conduct that would disturb the peace and order of the neighborhood and that they prevent their guests from engaging in such conduct. On one occasion, a guest of Ms. Carroll became involved in a fight with another visitor to the complex. Although Ms. Carroll was not directly involved in the altercation, the Commission terminated her tenancy for failure to control her guest.

When she refused to vacate the townhouse, the Commission filed an action in the district court under Md.Code Real Prop, art., § 8^02 to evict her as a tenant holding over. 3 Ms. Carroll demanded a jury trial, and the case was transferred to the circuit court. The circuit court later determined that the amount in controversy did not satisfy the Constitutional and statutory threshold, which was then $500 and is now $5,000, and, for that reason remanded the case to the district court. ³³⁸ In reversing that order, the Court of Appeals held that (1) the order of remand was appealable because it terminated the action in the circuit court, (2) an action by a landlord under Real Prop, art., § 8-402 to recover possession of leased property was an action at law to which the right of jury trial attached, (3) in determining whether the amount in controversy exceeds the legal threshold for a jury trial, the court must be guided by what the plaintiff claims is in dispute unless it “clearly appears that the claim is actually for less than that amount,” and (4) considering not just the rent actually being paid by the tenant but also the value of her right to continued occupancy—the “bargain value” of her lease—it did not clearly appear that the amount in controversy was less than what the tenant claimed. The county does not contest the appealability of the remand order in this case; nor does it contest that the amount in controversy, under the standards enunciated in Carroll , exceeds the threshold sum of $5,000. The controversy, and the asserted distinction between this case and Carroll , lies in whether this is the kind of action to which, apart from any monetary threshold, the right of jury trial historically attached.

The county maintains that, unlike Carroll , this is not the case of a landlord seeking to repossess leased property from his tenant under Real Prop, art., § 8-402, but rather an action to abate a statutory nuisance. That kind of action, it maintains, has always been regarded as equitable in nature and therefore not subject to jury trial. Appellant, understandably, looks at the remedy sought—her eviction and the landlord’s reentry—and sees no meaningful distinction. The Supreme Court, in the context of the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the two appellate courts in Maryland, in the context of art. 23 of the Declaration of Rights, have dealt, in a more general way, with whether, and to what extent, the right to a jury trial attaches in an action that is both legal and equitable in nature or that seeks both legal and equitable relief.

The problem, though perhaps latent in a more narrow aspect earlier, became more acute ³³⁹ with the merger of law and equity procedure, achieved in the Federal system in 1938 and in Maryland in 1984. There are essentially two aspects to the problem—first, determining whether a particular claim is legal or equitable in nature, and second, in an action presenting both legal and equitable claims, sorting out what gets submitted to a jury and what is to be tried by the court. The second aspect often involves an action in which both legal and equitable claims, arising from the same underlying conduct or transaction and involving common issues of disputed fact, are presented. In Higgins v. Barnes, 310 Md. 532 , 530 A.2d 724 (1987), the Court had before it an action for specific performance, which was equitable in nature and therefore historically tried by the court, and a counterclaim for damages, which was legal in nature and thus historically triable before a jury, both involving common issues of law and fact.

In that context, the Court adopted the Federal approach of favoring the right to jury trial: “If an asserted counterclaim presents a legal claim historically accorded the right to jury trial and raises factual issues in common with the plaintiffs equitable claim, the defendant is ordinarily entitled to a jury determination of those factual legal issues.” Id. at 547 , 530 A.2d 724 . In Hashem v. Taheri, 82 Md.App. 269 , 571 A.2d 837 (1990), the plaintiff, in a multi-count complaint, asserted both derivative actions, as a stockholder on behalf of a corporation (equitable claims), and direct claims for damages (legal claims), all of which were dependent on whether he was, in fact, a stockholder. The question was whether that issue, which was in dispute, was to be tried by a jury as a law case or a judge as an equitable case. We concluded that the common issue was triable by a jury, adopting the approach of the Supreme Court in Ross v. Bernhard, 396 U.S. 531, 537-38 , 90 S.Ct. 733, 737-38 , 24 L.Ed.2d 729 (1970): “[WJhere equitable and legal claims are joined in the same action, there is a right to jury trial on the legal claims which must not be infringed either by trying the legal issues as ³⁴⁰ incidental to the equitable ones or by a court trial of a common issue existing between the claims.” Reviewing these decisions in Mattingly v. Mattingly,