Edwards v. Habib, 397 F.2d 687

Case citation

Case citation is the system used in many countries to identify the decisions in past court cases, either in special series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a 'neutral' form which will identify a decision wherever it was reported...

 (1968), was a case

Legal case

A legal case is a dispute between opposing parties resolved by a court, or by some equivalent legal process. A legal case may be either civil or criminal...

 decided by the D.C. Circuit that includes the first recognition of retaliatory eviction

Retaliatory eviction

In American landlord–tenant law, a retaliatory eviction is a substantive defense and affirmative cause of action that can be used by a tenant against a landlord...

 as a defense to eviction

Eviction

How you doing???? Eviction is the removal of a tenant from rental property by the landlord. Depending on the laws of the jurisdiction, eviction may also be known as unlawful detainer, summary possession, summary dispossess, forcible detainer, ejectment, and repossession, among other terms...

 in landlord-tenant law.

Factual background

Plaintiff Edwards rented

Lease

A lease is a contractual arrangement calling for the lessee to pay the lessor for use of an asset. A rental agreement is a lease in which the asset is tangible property...

property from defendant Habib on a month-to-month basis. Habib failed to address sanitary code violations brought up by Edwards, so Edwards reported Habib to the Department of Licenses and the Inspection Department. An inspection revealed 40 sanitary code violations, and Habib was ordered to rectify the violations. After the inspection, Habib obtained a default judgment against Edwards in a statutory eviction action.

Holding

The court held that a tenant cannot be evicted for reporting sanitary code violations, and this became known as the defense of retaliatory eviction.