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HMGJ Partner Jesse Gribben recently won big for tenants at the Appellate Term, First Department. The tenant in the underlying housing court non-payment case, Trafalgar v. Malone, argued that the landlord could not collect rent because the building did not have a valid certificate of occupancy. Pending a final determination of the housing court case, the tenant deposited “use and occupancy,” (what rent is called after a lease ends) with the court and paid several months of use and occupancy directly to the landlord. The money paid and deposited was “without prejudice,” to the tenant’s defenses. The court held all of these monies must be returned to the tenant and the decision was upheld on appeal.
HMGJ Partner David Hershey-Webb co-authored a proposed amicus brief with Tim Collins of Collins, Dobkin, Miller LLP on behalf of Met Council Inc., Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village Tenants Association, P.A.L.A.N.T.E. Harlem, West Side Democrats, Park West Village Tenants Association, Housing Rights Initiative, Stellar Tenants For Affordable Housing, 50 West 93rd Street Tenants Association and The Central Park Gardens Tenants Association, in support of Appellees, City Of New York, Rent Guidelines Board and others and Intervenors, N.Y. Tenants And Neighbors (T&N), Community Voices Heard (CVH) And Coalition For The Homeless in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
The case was brought by New York Landlords and Landlord organizations to challenge the constitutionality of the Housing, Stability and Tenant Protection Act (“HSTPA”) of 2019. The lower federal court dismissed the case and it is now on appeal. Landlords are trying to get the case before the US Supreme Court in the hopes that the court will strike down all or some of the rent-stabilization laws. So far New York City, New York State and Tenant Advocacy Organizations have been successful in convincing the court that the Landlord’s arguments lack merit.
HMGJ attorneys Ronald Languedoc and William Gribben won a significant victory, Casey v. Whitehouse Estates, Inc. before the Appellate Division, First Department, for 78 tenants of a midtown Manhattan building residing in apartments unlawfully deregulated while the landlord was in receipt of J-51 tax benefits. The tenants brought the suit in 2011. The court determined that the rents for those 78 apartments had to be recalculated pursuant to the default formula, and that the rents are frozen from 2007 to present. Under the default formula, the rents are recalculated because of landlord fraud and/or because there are no reliable rental history records. The recalculation is usually based on the lowest stabilized rent for a comparable apartment in the building. In most cases, the rents are to be lowered from well over $2,000 per month to well under $1,500 per month. The tenants who have occupied those apartments over the past 14 years are entitled to a refund of the amounts overpaid, with interest, which will result in tens of millions of dollars of compensation.
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One hour consultation $400.00.
We don’t represent landlords and only handle cases in NYC.
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People often make the mistake of trying to manage a landlord-tenant dispute on their own. Without experienced legal counsel, however, it is easy to make the situation worse. We are skilled at negotiating with landlords, and fighting evictions in housing court and Supreme Court.
Himmelstein McConnell
Gribben & Joseph LLP
15 Maiden Lane
17th Floor
New York, NY 10038
phone
212-349-3000
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