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Childs v. Purll9/8/2005
s of 1411 Ridge Place would include children under eight years of age, § 707.3 imposed a specific, affirmative duty on the owners and their agents to provide those premises to the Childs family in a lead-free condition or not at all. Although the Purlls and their management company may not have known there was lead paint in the premises, "actual knowledge [of the defect] is not required for liability; it is enough if, in the exercise of reasonable care, appellee should have known that the condition . . . violated the standards of the Housing Code." Whetzel, 108 U.S. App. D.C. at 393, 282 F.2d at 951. "Ordinarily, the landlord will be chargeable with notice of conditions which existed prior to the time that the tenant takes possession," RESTATEMENT § 17.6 cmt. c, and the creation in § 707.3 of an affirmative duty to furnish lead-free premises implies a concomitant, antecedent duty to ascertain whether the premises in fact are lead-free. In effect, § 707.3 presumptively serves to put the landlord on constructive notice of any lead paint hazard in premises occupied by children under eight. See Juarez, 672 N.E.2d at 137 (holding that under a New York City lead abatement provision similar to § 707.3, a landlord who has actual or constructive notice that a child under seven years of age is residing in one of its apartment units "is chargeable with notice of any hazardous lead condition in that unit," and therefore is liable for damages in the event the child suffers lead poisoning from exposure to that condition). Moreover, on the record as it currently stands, no reason appears why the lead paint hazard at 1411 Ridge Place could not have been detected before Tiffany Childs and Robbie Davis were exposed to it; nor does the record establish that the Purlls took measures to eliminate the hazard, either before appellants' tenancy commenced or at any time thereafter.
In sum, the requirement of constructive notice is satisfied in this case, given § 707.3 and the notice to the landlord that two young children would be residing in the leased premises. Further, it cannot be said as a matter of law that the owners and their agents in this case have demonstrated that the alleged violation of a regulation designed to promote public safety was "excusable under the circumstances or [that] other acts of due care negate the negligence implied by the statutory violation." Zhou, 534 A.2d at 1277. In seeking summary judgment, the defendants have not presented evidence that they "did everything a reasonably prudent person would have done to comply with" § 707.3. Chadbourne, 779 A.2d at 295. We therefore are persuaded that the defendants were not entitled to summary judgment on appellants' cause of action for negligence based on their claimed lack of notice of the lead paint hazard at the leased premises. Accordingly, we reverse that portion of the trial court's judgment.
B. Consumer Protection Procedures Act
Whether the Consumer Protection Procedures Act authorizes appellants to seek enhanced relief for the defendants' alleged misrepresentations concerning the condition of the apartment rented to appellants at 1411 Ridge Place presents a question of law. As appellants contend, the Act was amended in March 1991 (before the commencement of appellants' tenancy) to prohibit deceptive trade practices in real estate sales and lease transactions with consumers, see DeBerry v. First Gov't Mortgage & Investors Corp., 743 A.2d 699, 701-02 & 702 n.8 (D.C. 1999); and the Act authorizes consumers aggrieved by prohibited trade practices to bring private civil actions in Superior Court for treble damages and other relief, see D.C. Code § 28-3905 (k)(1). Nonetheless, we conclude the trial court was correct in ruling a
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