Lower Court Must Recalculate Overcharge Liability Under HSTPA

Landlord sued to evict rent-stabilized tenant for nonpayment of rent. Tenant claimed rent overcharge. In July 2018, the court granted tenant's request to dismiss the case and awarded tenant $8,112 on a rent overcharge claim.

Landlord appealed and lost. Landlord argued that the lower court had incorrectly looked back more than four years to review rent history records even though there was no colorable claim of fraud. But that didn't matter now. Changes to the rent stabilization law made by the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 (HSTPA) applied to this pending case, and extended the statutory "lookback period" for overcharge proceedings from four to six years. As amended by HSTPA, the law also now permitted review of rent history records beyond the lookback period and provided that, for purposes of determining most overcharges, the legal rent would be the rent indicated in the most recent reliable annual registration statement filed and served on the tenant six or more years before the most recent rent registration statement, plus any subsequent lawful rent increases and adjustments. And the law called for consideration of more records. The appeals court sent the case back to the lower court to set forth a methodology consistent with HSTPA for determining the overcharge amount.

Vendaval Realty, LLC v. Felder: 2019 NY Slip Op 29364, Index No. 570444/19 (App. T. 1 Dept.; 12/2/19; Shulman, PJ, Cooper, Edmead, JJ)