Features

Common-Area Risk Abatement: Who is Responsible?
When customers, employees and others invited to or simply passing by a leased commercial property are injured, and want compensation, who will be on the hook for the costs of bodily injury and property damage — the landlord, the tenant, the maintenance and security contractor hired by them, or some combination of these?
Features

Commercial Rent Control in New York: Back Again?
As retail vacancies have multiplied in New York City in recent years, some in the City Council have advocated for the reconsideration of commercial rent control, as set out in a proposed piece of legislation, the Small Business Jobs Survival Act This article provides a brief, nontechnical review of the bill and the legal and practical hurdles it faces if enacted.
Features

West Village Houses: Units Ruled Not Stabilized Despite Receipt of J-51 Benefits
Ever since 2009, it has been an article of faith that a building's receipt of J-51 benefits means that all of the apartments therein automatically become rent-stabilized. If those apartments were already rent-stabilized, they become stabilized a second time. The second layer of rent stabilization has the effect of barring luxury deregulation, at least until J–51 benefits expire. In West Village Houses Renters Union v WVH Hous. Dev. Fund, Justice Barbara Jaffe held that the tenants of 32 unsold cooperative units at the West Village Houses complex were not rent-stabilized, even though their buildings had received J-51 benefits.
Columns & Departments
Development
Town Cannot Hold Back Building Permits as Financial Security<br>Parkland Alienation Doctrine Does Not Preclude Dock on Open Space Easement<br>Landowner Failed to Exhaust Administrative Remedies
Columns & Departments
Real Property Law
No Duty to Maintain Bulkhead<br>Self-Conveyance Did Not Sever Joint Tenancy<br>Promissory Estoppel Not Available to Avoid Statute of Frauds<br>Presumption of Hostility Sustains Prescriptive Easement Claim
Columns & Departments
Landlord & Tenant
Loft Tenant Subject to Rent Stabilization<br>Video Surveillance a Substitute for Part-Time Lobby Attendants
Features

What to Consider When Drafting Renewal and/or Expansion Terms in Arbitration Clauses
Navigating through a murky arbitration clause is no easy feat. Assuming familiarity with the basics, the following is a list of considerations that should prove valuable whether representing the tenant or the landlord.
Features

The Bankruptcy Code's Inherent Limitations for Struggling Golf Courses
<b><i>Part One of a Two-Part Article</b></i><p>This article describes conflicts with zoning boards and neighbors as it relates to distressed golf course properties and the methods sometimes available in the bankruptcy realm for working around the problem of restrictive covenants that run with the land.
Columns & Departments
Case Notes
Without Contractual Consent to Inspection, Lack of Protest Doesn't Excuse Landlord's Trespass<br>Resulting Trust Found Where Commercial Property Held in Just One Partner's Name
Features

Appellate Division Complicates the Rules for Municipalities Charging Consultants' Fees
In a case addressing what consulting fees (in particular attorneys' fees) can be charged to an applicant before a Zoning Board of Appeals, the Second Department in Landstein v. Town of LaGrange found that the Town had overreached its statutory authority.
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