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Willard v. Parsons Hill Partnership8/5/2005
action for the breach of the warranty of habitability and a negligence action arising from personal injuries allegedly suffered as a result of unsafe conditions on the premises; the two actions provide different remedies for different wrongs. Id. We cannot agree, therefore, that the Legislature intended to deprive tenants like the Willards and the Poulins of their contract remedy solely because their landlord had succeeded for so long in concealing its own contractual breach. But this is the effect of the trial court's holding.
32. Similarly, the fact that plaintiffs might also have remedies under the general consumer fraud statute for defendants' pre-notice conduct does not justify interpreting and applying the RRAA in a way that denies plaintiffs a remedy for what even the trial court recognized would be, if proven, defendants' clear breach of a landlord's warranty obligations. In Bisson v. Ward, we held that actions under the Consumer Fraud Act and the RRAA are "separate and distinct claims." 160 Vt. 343, 350, 628 A.2d 1256, 1261 (1993). There, we allowed a plaintiff tenant to pursue both a consumer fraud action and a warranty-of-habitability action against her landlords. Id.
II. Partnership Liability
33. Plaintiffs also assign error to the trial court's conclusion that the individual Rooney defendants could not be held liable for any breach of the partnership's obligations because the Rooneys were not the tenants' landlords. Plaintiffs do not dispute that Parsons Hill Partnership was their landlord, and that the Rooneys were not. Nonetheless, they contend that the laws of limited partnership in effect at the time they filed suit allow for them to sue the general partner and any limited partners who have participated unduly in the control of the partnership. Without citation to authority, defendants argue that plaintiffs were required to assert their cause of action under partnership law. The trial court granted summary judgment for the Rooneys after concluding that they could not be held liable for the partnership's breach because they were, " t best," agents of the landlord.
34. Our review of Vermont's limited-partnership law reveals no obstacle to plaintiffs' suit against the individual Rooney defendants. Moreover, the court erred in attempting, on summary judgment, to resolve disputed issues of fact surrounding the Rooneys' respective roles in the partnership. Thus, we reverse the trial court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the Rooney defendants.
35. Defendant Parsons Hill Partnership was organized under Vermont law in 1982. At that time and all times afterwards, Yvonne Rooney was the sole designated general partner. Sometime thereafter, Catherine and William Rooney were admitted as limited partners. From the time of the partnership's organization until approximately two years after plaintiffs filed the present lawsuit, Vermont limited partnerships were governed primarily by Title 11, chapter 11, formerly 11 V.S.A. §§ 1391-1420. Effective January 1, 1999, the Legislature repealed this chapter and replaced it with Title 11, chapter 23. 1997, No. 149 (Adj. Sess.), § 5. We apply the relevant provisions of the former laws because they were in effect at the time that all the partnership activities in question took place.
A. General Partner Liability
36. As general partner in Parsons Hill Partnership, Yvonne Rooney had, with some limitation, all the rights and powers and was subject to all the liability of a general partner in a partnership without limited partners. 11 V.S.A. § 1399. Under former 11 V.S.A. § 1207(2), a partner in a partnership without limited partners is jointly liable for all debts and obl
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