June 2025 Insights

By Eileen O’Toole, Esq., Contributing Editor

Two recent decisions of interest from New York’s Court of Appeals are reported in this issue.

In Matter of Hudson Valley Property Owners Association, Inc. v. City of Kingston (LVT #33734), New York’s highest court denied the appeal by a property owners’ group that challenged Kingston’s 2022 adoption of the Emergency Tenant Protection Act. The owners had maintained that the vacancy survey conducted by the city was faulty and didn’t support the adoption of rent stabilization coverage. Upholding prior rulings by the lower courts, the Court found that Kingston’s survey was “reasonably reliable” concerning the actual vacancy rate in the city. Rent stabilization coverage in Kingston was affirmed.

The Court also upheld “fair market rent” guidelines, set by the Kingston Rent Guidelines Board, that allow tenants to apply for refunds if they were overcharged for rent during a period between 2019 and 2022. The Court affirmed a 2024 lower court ruling that a minus 15 percent rent adjustment for all rent-stabilized units in the city was permissible.

The Court of Appeals also ruled in April that victims attacked by someone’s pets can now sue the pet owners for negligence. In this landmark decision, Flanders v. Goodfellow (LVT #33736), the Court overturned the prior New York rule that blocked negligence claims against pet owners and which limited victims to making strict liability claims. Under the Court's decision, victims can now sue for negligence if a pet owner failed to act reasonably to prevent harm, even without proof of prior dangerous behavior by the animal. While the Flanders case involved an attack on a postal carrier by a homeowner’s dog, the Court’s ruling would apply in cases involving tenant liability for a pets’ behavior, and may affect a building owner’s liability as well.

In an administrative appeal of a regulatory exemption ruling, the DHCR addressed a question not often raised since the heyday of cooperative and condominium building conversions in the 1980s and 1990s. In Matter of Bravo (LVT #33723), a building was converted to a condominium in 1987 and a nonpurchasing tenant in occupancy at that time remained subject to rent stabilization. A subsequent tenant, who moved into the unit in 2021, sought a ruling from the DHCR that he too was rent stabilized. But, since this renter was not a “non-purchasing tenant” as defined by General Business Law §252-eee(1)(e), the DHCR ruled that the tenant could not claim any rent-regulated status. Once the prior rent-stabilized tenant moved out, the unit was unregulated.