Alleged Occupants Waited Too Long to Claim Rights to SRO Units

In 2005, landlord sued to evict two occupants of combined SRO units after the permanent tenant of record died. The occupants claimed succession rights but failed to comply with court-ordered pre-trial questioning. In 2009, after much litigation, the occupants signed a settlement agreement in court by which they waived any tenancy rights and agreed to surrender possession. At about that time, two relatives of the occupants sought to intervene in the proceeding, claiming that they had lived in the SRO units since 2000 and therefore qualified as permanent tenants under Rent Stabilization Code Section 2520.6(j). The court allowed them to present their answer to the eviction petition. Landlord appealed, claiming that this was improper.

The appeals court ruled for landlord. The relatives showed no reasonable excuse for their extreme, four-year delay in seeking to answer landlord's petition. They claimed that they believed that the attorney for the other occupants also represented them. But this wasn't a reasonable excuse for their delay, and any such belief was unreasonable under the circumstances. The relatives also had no meritorious defense to the eviction proceeding. There was no reference to the relatives as additional occupants of the units in the extensive record before the lower court.

1234 Broadway LLC v. Huang: 2014 NY Slip Op 24093, 2014 WL 1385335 (App. T. 1 Dept.; 4/9/14; Shulman, JP, Hunter Jr., Torres, JJ)