Court Properly Looked Back More Than Four Years to Assess Claim

Landlord sued to evict tenant for nonpayment of rent. Landlord claimed that tenant was unregulated. But tenant claimed that he was subject to rent stabilization and challenged the deregulated status of the apartment. The court ruled for tenant and dismissed the case.

Landlord appealed and lost. The trial court properly considered rent history beyond the four-year time limit to determine whether the apartment was rent stabilized. And landlord failed to prove at trial that expenses for individual apartment improvements (IAIs) performed prior to the high-rent vacancy justified a $928 rent increase. The court also properly dismissed a holdover proceeding that landlord subsequently commenced on the same grounds as the dismissed nonpayment proceeding. And the court properly dismissed landlord's request for a new trial of the nonpayment proceeding based on newly discovered evidence because it failed to show why new evidence of IAIs presented seven months after the first trial couldn't have been presented previously.

Parkside Group v. Leader: 2018 NY Slip Op 50269(U), 2018 WL 1078413 (App. T. 1 Dept.; 2/28/18; Shulman, PJ, Gonzalez, Cooper, JJ)