Gural appeals a second OAH decision -- calling for treble damages for overcharges in bad faith

Harry Gural has filed a second appeal with the DC Rental Housing Commission of an Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) decision in his long-running stabilization-control case against Equity Residential and Smith Property Holdings Van Ness LP.

The appeal challenges portions of an August 2024 decision by OAH. The court found that Equity had charged Gural rent increases greater than permitted under D.C. law and ordered the company to pay $46,798 in rent refunds plus $13,090 in interest, for a total of $59,888. The judge also rolled Gural’s rent back to $1,770 per month.

However, OAH declined to award treble damages and rejected Gural’s claim that Equity had retaliated against him, declining to allow the admission of extensive evidence that Equity had systematically overcharged tenants. A related case that had been brought by former DC Attorney General Karl Racine resulted in a $2 million judgment against Equity for these practices.

However, OAH declined to award treble damages and rejected Gural’s claim that Equity had retaliated against him. During the proceedings, the court also excluded several exhibits that Gural contended showed that Equity had systematically used similar rent-concession practices to overcharge other tenants.

A related enforcement case brought by the office of former D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine resulted in substantial penalties against Equity for its rent-concession practices, including $1 million in restitution for residents of 3003 Van Ness. Gural been the whistleblower for the Attorney General’s case regarding Equity’s rent practices and he assisted dozens of other residents in challenging their rent increases.

In his appeal, Gural asks the Commission to consider that continuing conduct in deciding whether the overcharges were made in bad faith. He argues that it is implausible that a $25 billion rental housing company would not know the most basic District laws regarding rental housing, and that furthermore, even a landlord that might initially have claimed uncertainty about the law could no longer make that claim after the Rental Housing Commission ruled against its interpretation. Therefore, when Equity continued to overcharge Gural after losing several legal decisions, it was doing so deliberately in bad faith.

Gural also appeals OAH’s rejection of his retaliation claim. As president of the Van Ness South Tenants Association, Gural had been helping other tenants challenge Equity’s rent increases when the company sued him for eviction over approximately $300 in disputed rent. Under D.C. law, Gural argues, his tenant advocacy triggered a presumption of retaliation that Equity was required to rebut with clear and convincing evidence.

The appeal also challenges OAH’s refusal to include thousands of dollars in late fees and related charges that Equity added to Gural’s account while the rent dispute remained unresolved.

This is Gural’s second appeal to the Rental Housing Commission in the case. In 2020, the Commission reversed important portions of an earlier OAH decision, also by Chief Administrative Law Judge M. Colleen Currie. Gural rejects Equity’s position that annual rent increases could be calculated using a higher, pre-concession rent rather than the rent actually charged to the tenant, and remanding additional issues for further proceedings.

By approximately 2019, Equity appears to have stopped using the same rent-concession method to calculate rent increases for other residents of 3003 Van Ness. That followed the Rental Housing Commission’s Fineman decision, enforcement litigation by the D.C. Attorney General, and enactment by the D.C. Council of the Rent Charged Definition Clarification Act.

Nevertheless, Equity continued to demand substantially higher rent from tenant association president Harry Gural. By the time of the OAH proceedings, the disputed rent demands had accumulated into tens of thousands of dollars.