Tenant Abandoned Claim Against Landlords by Failing to Seek Default Judgment

Former tenant sued landlords in October 2011 for damages based on injuries she claimed resulted from exposure to lead-based paint in landlords' buildings. The court granted requests by two of the landlords to dismiss the case against them without a trial. Tenant appealed and lost. The two landlords owned one of the buildings that tenant had lived in. They never answered the court complaint but moved to dismiss in January 2013, claiming that the case had been abandoned by tenant. Tenant's failure to seek a default judgment against landlords within one year of their default warranted dismissal of the complaint against them as abandoned. Tenant presented no reasonable excuse for not moving against these landlords sooner. She had pursued the case with pretrial questioning against four other landlords and had contacted at least two insurance companies to investigate whether landlords had insurance to cover the claim.

Fuentes v. Hoffman: 2014 NY Slip Op 04326, 2014 WL 2619946 (App. Div. 4 Dept.; 6/13/14; Scudder, PJ, Fahey, Lindley, Valentino, Whalen, JJ)