Landlord Should Provide Surveillance Videos to Tenant, at Tenant's Expense

Landlord sued to evict rent-stabilized tenant for nonprimary residence. During trial, tenant asked the court to preclude landlord from introducing videotape evidence of comings and goings from the building because tenant wasn’t given sufficient opportunity by landlord to review the evidence. Tenant and her attorney viewed footage at the office of landlord’s attorney for four hours. But the surveillance tapes consisted of 302 consecutive days of footage that could take 50 hours to review. The court ruled that it would be unreasonable to require landlord’s attorney to allow extended viewing at its offices. But landlord should provide a copy of the videos to tenant, at tenant’s expense, so that tenant could take a month to review, and then return to court to continue trial.

Goldman v. Bracker: 53 Misc.3d 1210(A), 2016 N.Y. Slip Op. 51561(U) (Civ. Ct. NY; 10/26/16; Kraus, J)