Louisville Board of Realtors v. City of Louisville

634 S.W.2d 163, 1982 Ky. App. LEXIS 218
CourtCourt of Appeals of Kentucky
DecidedJune 11, 1982
StatusPublished

This text of 634 S.W.2d 163 (Louisville Board of Realtors v. City of Louisville) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Kentucky primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Louisville Board of Realtors v. City of Louisville, 634 S.W.2d 163, 1982 Ky. App. LEXIS 218 (Ky. Ct. App. 1982).

Opinion

WILHOIT, Judge.

This is an appeal from those portions of a judgment of the Jefferson Circuit Court which held inspection provisions of the 1975 City of Louisville Housing Code to be constitutional under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Section 10 of the Kentucky Constitution, and which held the provisions of the Code imposing an inspection fee not to violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Before going forward to discuss the substantive issues raised on this appeal, we must consider the appellees’ contention that this appeal has been rendered moot by the repeal of the 1975 Housing Code and the adoption of a new Code in 1979. A copy of the 1975 Code does not appear in the record before us, although the record does contain a copy of the 1979 Code. From the statements of the parties made in their briefs and at oral argument, as well as statements contained in the record, we conclude that the provisions of the 1975 Code which are sought to be challenged in this appeal are very similar, if not identical, to provisions found in the 1979 Code. For this reason, we are of the opinion that the substantive issues raised should be determined since the City of Louisville is likely to continue the same practices under the same circumstances now as it did under the 1975 Code. Commonwealth ex rel. Stephens v. Isaacs, Ky. App., 577 S.W.2d 617 (1979).

Both the 1975 and 1979 versions of the Code require that the owner of a “dwelling or dwelling unit” obtain a certificate of compliance or temporary certificate of compliance from the City’s housing director before advertising for rent or renting a “dwelling or dwelling unit.” The purpose of the certificate is to ensure compliance with the City’s housing code. To obtain a certificate, the owner of the premises must submit a written application to the housing director requesting an inspection. This application must be accompanied by payment of an inspection fee which ranges from [165]*165$12.00 to over $260.00. Upon receipt of the application, the housing director is to cause the premises to be inspected within fourteen days. If, without fault of the owner, no inspection is made within fourteen days, the owner may rent the premises until an inspection is conducted. A certificate of compliance, depending upon the location of the property and other factors, expires in twelve to sixty months, after which the owner must apply for a renewal. The renting of a unit without having applied for an inspection is punishable by a fine of $25.00 to $100.00, by a jail term of up to fifty days for each day of failure to apply, or both.

The appellants contend that the requirement of the Housing Code that owners of rental property permit the property to be inspected to obtain a certificate of compliance or be subjected to fines or jailing for failure to obtain a certificate violates both the Fourth Amendment and Section 10 of the Kentucky Constitution by coercing the owners to consent to unreasonable searches and subjecting tenants occupying the premises at the time of inspection to unreasonable searches.

The trial court found that the Housing Code was “designed as a licensing program to upgrade substandard housing, alleviate harmful matters such as lead-base paint and defective gas space heaters, and establish basic sanitary standards for health reasons[.]” It likened the purpose of the Housing Code to that of other “regulatory programs such as those requiring a plumbing inspection, an electrical inspection, and a heating inspection, which ... have long been upheld[.]” The court concluded that the inspection required to obtain a certificate was reasonable and not violative of either the United States or Kentucky Constitution. In support of this conclusion it cited See v. City of Seattle, 387 U.S. 541, 87 S.Ct. 1737, 18 L.Ed.2d 943 (1967); Colonnade Catering Corp. v. United States, 397 U.S. 72, 90 S.Ct. 774, 25 L.Ed.2d 60 (1970); and United States v. Biswell, 406 U.S. 311, 92 S.Ct. 1593, 32 L.Ed.2d 87 (1972). In an effort to reach the proper solution to the issue presented, we have reviewed these decisions by the United States Supreme Court as well as its decisions in Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967), and Marshall v. Barlow’s, Inc., 436 U.S. 307, 98 S.Ct. 1816, 56 L.Ed.2d 305 (1978).

In Camara, the Court held that the tenant occupant of an apartment had a right under the Fourth Amendment to refuse to consent to the inspection of his apartment by a city housing inspector who had no search warrant authorizing him to inspect the premises. It observed that except in certain carefully defined classes of cases a nonconsensual search of private property is unreasonable unless authorized by a valid search warrant. The other cases mentioned above involved searches of commercial rather than residential property. The Supreme Court itself summarized all of these cases as standing for the proposition that the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches applies to administrative searches of private commercial property, but, unlike searches of private homes which generally must be conducted pursuant to a warrant to be reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, legislative schemes authorizing warrantless administrative searches of commercial property do not necessarily violate the Fourth Amendment. Donovan v. Dewey, 452 U.S. 594, 101 S.Ct. 2534, 69 L.Ed.2d 262 (1981). It explained that

[t]he greater latitude to conduct warrant less inspections of commercial property reflects the fact that the expectation of privacy that the owner of commercial property enjoys in such property differs significantly from the sanctity accorded an individual’s home, and that this privacy interest may, in certain circumstances, be adequately protected by regulatory schemes authorizing warrantless inspections.

452 U.S. at 598, 101 S.Ct. at 2538, 69 L.Ed.2d at 268-69 (citation omitted).

The question before us is made more complex because we are dealing with property which is commercial in nature as far as [166]*166the owner or landlord is concerned,1 but which becomes the home of the tenant once he occupies it. For this reason, it seems clear that the owner’s expectation of privacy in such property should be considered to differ somewhat from that of the occupying tenant, and what might be reasonable as to the former under the Fourth Amendment would not necessarily be reasonable as to the latter. In Camara v. Municipal Court, supra, the attempted warrantless inspection was of a tenant-occupied apartment without the tenant’s consent. The inspection was being made on a random basis, and the tenant had no way of knowing whether the inspection was authorized or what its limits should have been.

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Related

Chapman v. United States
365 U.S. 610 (Supreme Court, 1961)
See v. City of Seattle
387 U.S. 541 (Supreme Court, 1967)
Colonnade Catering Corp. v. United States
397 U.S. 72 (Supreme Court, 1970)
United States v. Biswell
406 U.S. 311 (Supreme Court, 1972)
Marshall v. Barlow's, Inc.
436 U.S. 307 (Supreme Court, 1978)
Donovan v. Dewey
452 U.S. 594 (Supreme Court, 1981)
Roe v. Commonwealth
405 S.W.2d 25 (Court of Appeals of Kentucky (pre-1976), 1966)
Sullivan v. Brawner, Sheriff
36 S.W.2d 364 (Court of Appeals of Kentucky (pre-1976), 1931)
Mansbach Scrap Iron Co. v. City of Ashland
30 S.W.2d 968 (Court of Appeals of Kentucky (pre-1976), 1930)
City of Horse Cave v. Pierce
437 S.W.2d 185 (Court of Appeals of Kentucky, 1969)
Commonwealth ex rel. Stephens v. Isaacs
577 S.W.2d 617 (Court of Appeals of Kentucky, 1979)
City of Henderson v. Lockett
163 S.W. 199 (Court of Appeals of Kentucky, 1914)
Boyd v. City of Louisville
198 S.W. 927 (Court of Appeals of Kentucky, 1917)

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Bluebook (online)
634 S.W.2d 163, 1982 Ky. App. LEXIS 218, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/louisville-board-of-realtors-v-city-of-louisville-kyctapp-1982.