SRO Tenants Get Preliminary Injunction Against Landlord's Use of Video Cameras Inside Building

Rent-stabilized tenants in a single-room occupancy (SRO) brownstone building collectively shared access to the building's kitchen, bathrooms, living area, and backyard. Landlord bought the building in 2015 and in 2016 sued to evict tenants to recover their units for owner occupancy. After the HSTPA was enacted in June 2019, tenants asked the court to dismiss the pending case because HSTPA amended the Rent Stabilization Law to bar a landlord from recovering multiple rent-stabilized units based on a landlord's proposed personal use. In June 2020, the court then permitted landlord to withdraw the case. 

In September 2020, tenants sued landlord, seeking damages for private nuisance and harassment in violation of NYC Admin. Code Section 27-2005(d). They claimed that, after landlord withdrew the eviction proceedings, it began engaging in a course of conduct designed to cause them to move out. This conduct included the installation of video cameras in the hallways of the property. Tenants asked the court for an injunction preventing landlord from maintaining and operating the video cameras in the interior portions of the property. They also wanted to bar landlord from conducting inspections on the property without reasonable notice. In January 2021, the court granted tenants a preliminary injunction barring landlord from conducting inspections on the property without reasonable notice and from operating the video cameras only to the extent that the cameras would capture any persons entering or exiting any bathrooms on the property.

Tenants appealed, claiming the preliminary injunction was too limited. The appeals court ruled for tenants. The lower court properly, in effect, had determined that the tenants had established a probability of success on the merits, a danger of irreparable injury, and that the equities favor them. But the lower court improvidently exercised its discretion in limiting that preliminary injunction to enjoining landlord only from operating video cameras that captured persons entering or exiting any bathrooms in the property. Under the circumstances of this case, the court should have granted tenants' request in its entirety, and preliminarily enjoined landlord from operating video cameras in the interior portions of the property.

Suchdev v. Grunbaum: Case No. 2021-01950, 2022 NY Slip Op 01195 (App. Div. 2 Dept.; 2/23/22; Iannacci, JP, Miller, Maltese, Dowling, JJ)