Legal Question in Real Estate Law in District of Columbia

Criminal liability for fraud committed by tenant?

I am in DC but believe this is general.

I am the landlord in a landlord-tenant dispute. The only way the tenant can win the dispute is to lie to the court and falsify documentation. The tenant apparently intends to do that. My questions are:

(i) Is the tenant liable to criminal charges for this behavior?

(ii) How do I bring these charges or set in motion the process of bringing these charges?

and, less important,

(iii) Are the charges necessarily contingent on the outcome of the civil proceedings?


Asked on 2/06/03, 2:13 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Michael Hendrickson Law Office Michael E. Hendrickson

Re: Criminal liability for fraud committed by tenant?

Lying to the court and falsifying documentation to support the lies would be grounds to bring either charges of civil and/or criminal contempt

againt the perpetrator.

You would need to present evidence to the court

sufficently compelling to convince the court

by a preponderance of the evidence standard that

your charges are true in order to sustain a finding by the court of civil contempt against the tenant.

To sustain such a finding by the court against the tenant for criminal contempt, the evidence would have to meet the high standard of beyond reasonable doubt.

The bringing and disposition of these charges would not be contingent on the outcome of the

landlord-tenant civil case as each charge, whether

for civil or criminal contempt, would constitute a separate case in its own right.

Read more
Answered on 2/07/03, 12:18 am


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