Swinson v. Lords Landing Village Condominium9/8/2000
ation of the Secretary of Health and Mental Hygiene. The local health codes, to the extent they exist in Maryland, tend to vary from county to county. They usually supplement State laws and regulations and may cover such things as local hospitals, food service facilities, pest and animal control, refuse disposal, reporting communicable diseases, swimming pools, and air pollution.
Although there may be some overlap among some of their provisions, the health, building, and housing codes generally deal with different matters and are found in separate parts of the county codes. The BOCA building code specifies substantive and procedural construction requirements for all types of structures, including standards and requirements relating to building heights, setbacks and lot lines, provisions for light and ventilation, structural loads and stresses, construction materials, mechanical systems, building floor area, egress facilities, landings, railings, slope of ramps and stairways, wall thicknesses, and fireproofing. Local building codes may add requirements relating to grading, drainage, and plumbing and electrical work and materials. The local housing codes, on the other hand, principally concern the maintenance and habitability of residential structures. They may include provisions dealing with landlord-tenant regulations, trash and litter, pest control, yard maintenance, minimum standards for light, ventilation, and heating, exterior walls, and unsafe conditions. Some of the Maryland subdivisions - including Baltimore City and Anne Arundel, Montgomery, and Prince Georges Counties - had adopted a separate housing code by 1981; others had not. In those counties that had a housing code, the housing code provisions were usually self-contained in a title, subtitle, or chapter separate from the building code. To the extent that the subdivisions had enacted health codes, they, too, were separate from the building codes.
It seems clear, therefore, that, when the General Assembly chose to specify the disclosure of health and building code violations, it was presumably aware that there were separate housing codes in existence, both nationally and in some of the major Maryland subdivisions, and yet it omitted to require disclosure of known violations of housing codes. Whether that omission was deliberate or merely an oversight is not for us to determine; the important fact is that housing code violations are not currently required to be disclosed and LLVC did not purport to disclose any such violation. The answer given in Item 8, therefore, was not false or misleading and in no way concerned the housing code violation referenced in the County's Violation Notice.
We turn, then, to the response in Item 5 concerning litigation. All that the law requires in that regard is a statement "of any judgments against the condominium and the existence of any pending suits to which the council of unit owners is a party." ยง 11-135(a)(4)(vii). The letters attached to the Resale Certificate revealed the existence of the only lawsuit to which LLVC was then a party. It is true that the answer, which comprised only those letters, revealed nothing about the current status of the litigation, but the law does not require information about current status -- only the existence of the litigation. Accordingly, that answer too was in conformance with the statute and was neither false nor misleading. Because the information supplied by LLVC was not false or misleading, petitioner failed to establish an action of either fraud or negligent misrepresentation. Whether she reasonably relied upon the information given is therefore irrelevant.
JUDGMENT AFFIRMED, WITH COSTS.
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