Landlord Fraudulently Deregulated J-51 Apartments
LVT Number: #28073
Two tenants sued their building's landlord, claiming that they were improperly given unregulated leases when they moved into the building in 1999 and 2008 respectively. The building received J-51 benefits between 1998 and 2010. Tenants also claimed fraud and rent overcharge under rent stabilization.
The court ruled for tenants and ordered that rent overcharges be calculated using the DHCR's default method. Landlord admitted that tenants were rent stabilized, offered tenants rent-stabilized leases, registered the apartments with the DHCR, and tendered rent refunds that were rejected by tenants. Given the available rent history information and landlord's failure to treat the apartments as rent stabilized after the court decisions in the Roberts and Gersten cases, tenants had demonstrated fraud, and there were inadequate records to determine the actual rent history of the apartments. The court approved issuance of a subpoena to the DHCR to obtain rent registration records so that the lowest rent charged for a rent-stabilized apartment with the same number of rooms in the same building on the relevant base dates would be used to set the base date rents. The court held off on determining triple damages, and denied tenants' claim for damages for deceptive business practices under GBL Section 349.
Cooper v. 85th Estates Company: 2017 NY Slip Op 51636(U), 2017 WL 5934003 (Sup. Ct. NY Co.; 11/29/17; Reed, J)