Landlord Tenant Law

Lot Owner Lacks Standing to Compel Payment of Assessments
No Foreclosure Jurisdiction Over Deceased Owners
Questions of Fact Preclude Summary Judgment on Claims of Easement By Necessity and Prescription

Zoning Board Bound By Prior Determination
Planning Board Had Rational Basis to Require Church to Record an Easement
Special Permit Denial Overturned
Restrictive Zoning Ordinance Sustained Against Multiple Challenges

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?

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.

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.

Town Cannot Hold Back Building Permits as Financial Security
Parkland Alienation Doctrine Does Not Preclude Dock on Open Space Easement
Landowner Failed to Exhaust Administrative Remedies

No Duty to Maintain Bulkhead
Self-Conveyance Did Not Sever Joint Tenancy
Promissory Estoppel Not Available to Avoid Statute of Frauds
Presumption of Hostility Sustains Prescriptive Easement Claim

Loft Tenant Subject to Rent Stabilization
Video Surveillance a Substitute for Part-Time Lobby Attendants