## Facts

- Elmer Dickhut owned residential premises in Milwaukee; Clifford Norton rented a second-floor flat under an oral month-to-month tenancy for $65 per month beginning in early 1967.
- On May 21, 1968, Norton complained to the Milwaukee City Health Department about allegedly insanitary conditions at the premises.
- A health department inspector investigated and corroborated the complaint and inspection.
- On May 25, 1968, Dickhut received notice of the complaint from the Health Department.
- Norton alleged Dickhut immediately stated the tenancy would be terminated, and Dickhut then served a written 30-day notice to vacate by June 30, 1968.
- Norton refused to vacate; Dickhut filed an unlawful detainer action on July 9, 1968 seeking a writ of restitution.
- Norton answered that he was not holding over without right and alleged the termination was retaliatory for his complaint to health authorities.

## Issues

1. Whether a tenant in an unlawful detainer action may assert retaliatory eviction as a defense when the landlord allegedly terminated the tenancy in response to the tenant’s good-faith complaint to governmental health/housing authorities.
2. Whether enforcing an eviction motivated by such retaliation would violate the tenant’s constitutional right to petition government and frustrate state public policy embodied in health and housing regulation.

## Decision

- The Wisconsin Supreme Court reversed the circuit court’s judgment on the pleadings and remanded for further proceedings.
- The Court held retaliatory eviction is a legally valid defense in an unlawful detainer action when the tenant alleges the landlord acted in retaliation for the tenant’s good-faith complaint to appropriate governmental authorities about housing-code violations.
- The circuit court erred by striking the retaliatory-eviction allegations as “immaterial” and entering judgment on the pleadings without allowing the tenant to litigate the landlord’s motive.

## Legal Principles

- A landlord may not use termination and eviction procedures to retaliate against a tenant for making good-faith complaints to governmental authorities regarding housing-code or sanitary violations.
- State courts may not enforce an eviction that operates as a penalty for the tenant’s exercise of the First Amendment right to petition government for redress of grievances.
- Statutory rights to terminate a month-to-month tenancy are constrained by constitutional guarantees and by state public policy favoring effective enforcement of health and housing standards.
- Retaliatory eviction is not an automatic bar to eviction; it is a defense that requires proof of retaliatory motive, ordinarily presenting a question of fact.

## Conclusion

The court recognized retaliatory eviction as a permissible defense to unlawful detainer where a landlord’s termination is motivated by a tenant’s good-faith complaint to public health authorities, and it reversed the pleadings-stage eviction judgment so the tenant could litigate retaliatory motive.


Dickhut v. Norton, 45 Wis. 2d 389, 173 N.W.2d 297 (Wis. 1970)