Court Applies Regina Ruling to Limit Rent Overcharge Finding

Landlord sued to evict rent-stabilized tenant in April 2019 based on nonpayment of rent. In response, tenant claimed rent overcharge based on a 2016 DHCR decision. Landlord claimed that it already had credited tenant with the total $4,282 overcharge found by the DHCR. But tenant claimed more recent overcharges following the period covered by the DHCR order, which determined overcharges only through April 2014. Tenant claimed that the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 (HSTPA) extended the lookback period for her current overcharge claim to six years.

However, in April 2020, New York's highest court ruled in Regina Metropolitan v. DHCR that an overcharge claim must be resolved under the law in effect at the time the overcharges occurred. Here, the court found that to mean that "overcharge claims that accrued prior to the effective date of the HSTPA are to be resolved under the law in effect at the time of the overcharge." The overcharge in this case predated the effective date of HSTPA on June 14, 2019. So tenant's overcharge claim was limited to April 2015 forward, and triple damages could go back only two years before tenant filed her overcharge claim here.

Review of rent history records showed that landlord gave tenant a proper rent credit under the prior DHCR order but didn't begin to charge tenant a lower rent until October 2016. So, since April 2015 the total overcharge due tenant was $3,654. That overcharge also was willful but no overcharge took place during the two years before tenant raised her counterclaim. So no triple damages applied. Since landlord now owed tenant more than the amount of rent claimed unpaid, landlord's case was dismissed. 

Shalom Aleichem LLC v. Soto: Index No. L&T 17406/19, 2020 NY Slip Op 20091 (Civ. Ct. Bronx; 4/22/20; Garland, J)