A Portland landlord will be in court Tuesday to challenge a provision in a city ordinance that requires detailed disclosure of rents.

Bayview Court LLC and Eastern Promenade Limited Liability Co., which are owned by Lloyd Lathrop and rent out 102 units in Portland, filed the lawsuit in Cumberland County Superior Court in March 2021, after voters passed a rent control ordinance.

The ordinance requires landlords to disclose to the city current rents, any rent increases over the previous year, the reasons for those increases and security deposit amounts. That information, which is “anonymized” to “not include the names, or street and unit numbers of any reported units,” is meant to inform a rent board created by the initiative.

The initiative survived a larger lawsuit from the Southern Maine Landlord Association in July 2021, which argued the new law was vague and inconsistent with state and federal laws.

The landlord in the current lawsuit says the required information should be considered “trade secrets,” and therefore shielded from public records requests submitted to the city. The lawsuit argues that information should be available only to city employees charged with administering the ordinance, not the general public.

“The companies’ determination of rents reflects years of experience in judging the trends and directions in the rental market, financial analysis of what levels of investment (for instance, in infrastructure improvements and service levels) the market will support, how investments should be made and how they can be recovered, pricing analysis of inventory levels, and expert advice that the companies purchase from consultants,” the lawsuit states. “The companies’ compilations derive significant economic value from not being generally known.”

The city asked the court to dismiss the case earlier this year, arguing the information is not a “trade secret” under Maine law and is already disclosed on websites like Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist and Apartments.com.

Cumberland County Superior Justice Thomas McKeon denied that motion in July. A one-day bench trial, without a jury, was announced Sept. 15, after unsuccessful settlement talks.

The Portland Press Herald intervened in the case last year, to support the public’s right to access rental information.

The trial, on Zoom, begins at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday.

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