March Insights

By Eileen O’Toole, Esq., Contributing Editor

Several recent appellate court cases address issues raised by HSTPA and the Rent Stabilization Law. In Harris v. Israel (see LVT #31281), the First Dept. reversed an initial appeals court ruling that had retroactively applied HSTPA restrictions to an owner occupancy eviction case, after the owner had won at trial under the prior law. Relying on last year’s Regina decision by the Court of Appeals, the Appellate Division now found that applying the HSTPA amendments to pending owner occupancy cases denied the owner due process.

In another case, Montera v. KMR Amsterdam LLC (see LVT #31288), the First Dept. permitted a tenant to pursue a rent fraud claim against the owner in a case involving improper vacancy deregulation while the building received J-51 tax benefits. Although, generally, courts have declined to find any fraudulent scheme to deregulate by owners who followed DHCR guidance before the 2009 Roberts decision by the Court of Appeals, the Appellate Division now held that this rule was “not extended … to cases decided after Roberts.”

Several cases interpreted the COVID-19 Emergency Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2020 (CEEFPA) in disputes about how this law—intended to avoid evictions and foreclosures for people experiencing COVID-related illness risk or financial hardship—could be applied. In one case (see LVT #31302), CEEFPA was applied in a New York County Supreme Court ejectment action, where the judge ruled that the law was not meant to apply only to housing court eviction proceedings.

In a Queens County eviction proceeding based on tenant nuisance (see LVT #31318), the court vacated a pre-COVID default judgment and eviction warrant, thus avoiding potential application of CEEFPA’s exemption from protection in nuisance cases.