Tenants Present Insufficient Documents for Court to Find Fraudulent Scheme to Deregulate

Tenants of 11 buildings sued landlord, claiming landlord fraudulently deregulated rent-stabilized apartments in their buildings. The court granted tenants' request for pre-trial document production by landlord, and tenants later asked the court to strike landlord's defense or to bar landlord from introducing as evidence documents that it wrongfully withheld, particularly rent history records from the 1990s to 2012.

The court gave landlord some additional time to produce any missing records. Landlord had already produced a substantial number of documents and pointed out that it had taken countless hours to search, compile, and digitize tens of thousands of pages of rent history records. If landlord didn't comply by the final deadline granted, it would be precluded from offering at trial any pre-2012 documents not produced by that date as well as any post-2012 records not previously produced.

Since tenants also were seeking a ruling on their claims without trial, the court denied that request because tenants didn't sufficiently detail the grounds for this request. Tenants hadn't complied with Court Rule 202.8-g, which requires a short and concise statement in numbered paragraphs of the material facts that they  claimed showed a trial wasn't needed. Tenants' motion also wasn't supported by a party's sworn statement. Annexing the complaint to a statement by tenants' attorney wasn't a proper substitute for this purpose. The request must be based on facts asserted by someone with first-hand knowledge.

As to the records submitted as proof of fraudulent deregulation, DHCR registrations were insufficient to establish liability. Also, tenants submitted no leases, only charts that their attorney claimed summarized documentary evidence never presented to the court. This also was insufficient to warrant summary judgment. In addition, the current "totality of the circumstances" standard for determining rent fraud requires that a landlord's intention be assessed. This type of determination was "not likely to be very susceptible to summary determination on motion papers and certainly not on the record before this Court."

Maddicks v. 106-108 Convent BCR, LLC: Index No. 656345/2016, 2025 NY Slip Op 31547(U)(Sup. Ct. NY; 4/29/25; Kraus, JO