The Chief Administrative Justice of the Office of Administrative Hearings today issued a strong opinion denying Equity Residential’s Motion for Summary Judgment in the case of Harry Gural vs. Equity Residential / Smith Property Holdings Van Ness LP.

The court affirmed the decision of the Rental Housing Commission (RHC), the appellate body which decides rental housing issues. The RHC had ruled in favor of Gural is his case against Equity Residential, finding that maximum annual rent increases must be based on the rent actually paid by the tenant — not the extremely high, fictitious amounts that Equity Residential had routinely been inserting into leases.

Today’s hearing by OAH indicates that Equity Residential is unlikely to prevail in its case against Gural in the Landlord and Tenant Branch of DC Superior Court, in which Equity claimed that Gural had not paid his rent in full because he refused to pay a rent increase that was greater than what is allowed under DC law. Gural has been forced to pay approximately $297 per month since 2016 into court escrow because of Equity’s claim, now proven false, that he had failed to pay his rent in full — approximately $24,000 to date.