Monthly Archives: May 2023

This was originally published on the SGR Blog.

Would Court Order Tenant to Permit Access by Landlord?

Residential apartment leases usually authorize landlords access to the units to inspect and repair. And, as a recent case illustrates, the Court may be required to intervene where such access is denied.

400 West 59th Street Partners LLC is the owner and landlord of 1 Columbus Place in Manhattan. Tobi Oyolesi was a tenant of apartment S30C in the building, and Travis Lilley was a guest.

This was originally published on the SGR Blog.

Was Operation of Printing Press on Second Floor an Actionable Breach by Landlord?

Andrianna Shamaris, Inc, operated a luxury home specialty store located at 121 Varick Street, pursuant to a commercial lease signed in January of 2019 with 121 Varick St. Corp. The lease covered a portion of the ground floor retail space to be used as an “upscale furniture showroom.”

121 Varick Street sits atop the subway under Varick Street and is at the mouth of the Holland Tunnel. It also is located in what has historically been known as New York’s “printing district.” The building had a history of housing printing presses ever since seven printing companies formed the cooperative that is known as Varick. Each unit in the building also had a certificate of occupancy for manufacturing.

This was originally posted on the SGR Blog.

Did Adverse Impact On Service Constitute a Breach of Warranty?

Gene Rosen sued MF Associates of New York LLC and Ogen Cap Properties, LLC for breach of the warranty of habitability at four (4) high rise residential buildings located at 205/215/225 and 235 East 95th Street in Manhattan in a complex known as Normandie Court.

In his amended complaint, Rosen alleged, on behalf of himself and others similarly situated, that MF Associates and Ogden, as owner and manager, respectively, of the Normandie Court buildings, breached the warranty of habitability on rentals/leases in those buildings by depriving tenants of the use of elevators during a modernization project from approximately August of 2014 to July of 2015. Rosen brought the case as a class action on behalf of himself, a former resident of one of the buildings during the time of the elevator outages, as well as as-yet unnamed other residents during that time who suffered from the non-functioning elevators in their buildings. Rosen alleged that, during the modernization project, there were times the residential tenants suffered inadequate, unreliable, and on at least one occasion, no elevator service.