Digital Commons Network^™

Zotpri Llc V. Burton

All Decisions

In this nonpayment proceeding, the tenant, after retaining counsel, moved to amend their pro se answer to assert affirmative defenses of payment, laches, and breach of the warranty of habitability, along with counterclaims. The landlord opposed, arguing untimeliness and insufficient pleading of laches. The court granted the tenant's motion, allowing the amended answer with the payment and warranty of habitability defenses and counterclaims. However, the laches defense was stricken for insufficient pleading, as it failed to demonstrate lack of notice or prejudice to the tenant, beyond mere delay, which are essential elements for an equitable laches claim.

Osibodu V. Fehintola

All Decisions

In this holdover-lease expiration proceeding, the tenant moved to reargue and renew a prior denied motion to dismiss, citing new facts. The tenant argued that the landlord's subsequent filing of a new holdover proceeding for the same unit, but with a contradictory description of the premises (basement unit vs. first floor unit), constituted an admission of the original petition's inadequacy. The court granted the tenant's motion, finding the new description contradicted the landlord's earlier representations and rendered the original premises description deficient under RPAPL § 741(3) for a marshal to execute a warrant with certainty. The proceeding was dismissed without …

515-517 West 171st Street Llc V. Sequin

All Decisions

A landlord initiated a licensee holdover proceeding. The tenant, son of the former rent-controlled tenant, moved for summary judgment on his succession defense, claiming he primarily resided with his deceased father. The court granted the tenant's motion, finding sufficient evidence of co-residency for the statutory period, even considering the father's time in a nursing home before death. The landlord failed to raise material issues of fact, and the petition was dismissed, establishing the tenant's right to succeed to the rent-controlled tenancy.

Newstart Props. Inc V Hill

All Decisions

In this holdover proceeding, the landlord sought to evict the tenant for failing to sign a renewal lease for a Rent Stabilized apartment. After trial, the court dismissed the proceeding without prejudice, finding that the landlord's renewal lease offer was untimely under Rent Stabilization Code § 2523.5(a) because the previous lease expired in December 2021, but the offer was made in May 2024. Consequently, the landlord failed to comply with RSC § 2523.5(c)(1), which requires that untimely offers for renewal leases apply the rent guidelines rate in effect on the commencement date of the lease for which a timely offer …

1451 Associates Lp V Jordan

All Decisions

The court vacated a pro se tenant's stipulation of settlement in a non-payment proceeding, finding that over 90% of the stipulated arrears were retroactive lump sum charges under Section 8. The HUD Handbook specifies such charges are not grounds for eviction or a possessory judgment, and housing courts cannot issue money judgments without possession. Additionally, the landlord failed to serve a 30-day rent demand required by the CARES Act for this federally-subsidized dwelling. Consequently, the petition was dismissed without prejudice.

Jupiter 7 6 Llc V. Quinn

All Decisions

In this Good Cause Eviction Law (GCEL) holdover proceeding based on the tenant's alleged nonpayment of rent, the court denied the tenant's pre-answer motion to dismiss the petition. The tenant argued that the predicate 90-day notice of termination lacked specific details regarding the alleged rent arrears. The court ruled that the predicate notice is sufficient if it generally apprises the tenant of the issues, deeming specific arrears information unnecessary at the earliest stage of the proceeding, thus disagreeing with other courts that require such detail. The court further elaborated on a three-step procedure for a tenant to cure nonpayment in …

155 Linden Llc V. Washington

All Decisions

In this nonpayment proceeding, the court granted the tenant's motion for leave to file an amended answer and for summary judgment. The landlord sought rent arrears for a Rent Stabilized apartment. The tenant argued that the landlord was barred from collecting rent due to open Department of Buildings (DOB) violations indicating occupancy contrary to the building's certificate of occupancy. Citing MDL §§ 301 and 302 and the controlling precedent of *Chazon, LLC v. Maugeneset*, the court found that the sixteen open DOB violations for unauthorized conversion of commercial space precluded the landlord from prosecuting the nonpayment action, regardless of whether …

Hellmuth Owners Corp. V. Kaplan

All Decisions

In this nonpayment proceeding for a co-op, the landlord moved to dismiss tenant's counterclaims and affirmative defenses, and the tenant cross-moved for discovery. The court largely granted the landlord's motion, severing many counterclaims (including monetary damages, injunctive, and declaratory relief) without prejudice due to Housing Court's limited subject matter jurisdiction. Several affirmative defenses were also dismissed without prejudice for being insufficiently pleaded or devoid of merit. However, the tenant's constructive eviction counterclaim was allowed to proceed. The tenant's motion for discovery was denied as overly broad.

155 Linden Llc V. Washington

All Decisions

In this nonpayment proceeding, the tenant moved for leave to amend their answer and for summary judgment on affirmative defenses under Multiple Dwelling Law (MDL) §§ 301 and 302. The court granted leave to amend and then granted summary judgment to the tenant. It was undisputed that the building had sixteen open Department of Building (DOB) violations and partial vacate orders for unauthorized conversion of commercial space into apartments, which contravened the certificate of occupancy. Citing *Chazon, LLC v. Maugeneset*, the court held that these violations precluded the landlord from collecting rent, regardless of whether the tenant's specific unit was …

730 Gc Realty Corp V. Beltre

All Decisions

The landlord initiated a nonpayment proceeding against the tenants. Respondent-tenant Gerald Flores, after answering, moved to dismiss the case. The Civil Court granted the motion and dismissed the proceeding without prejudice, finding the landlord failed to file an affidavit of service for the notice of petition and petition. Citing appellate precedent, the court held that the failure to timely file proof of service constitutes a jurisdictional defect, preventing the landlord from establishing personal jurisdiction over the tenants and mandating dismissal under RPAPL § 733(1).

Hp Acp Housing Development Fund Company, Inc. As Nominee For Bsp 204-206 W 135 Llc And Bsp 204-206 W 135 2 Llc V. Bagwell

All Decisions

In a nonpayment proceeding, the tenant moved for leave to conduct discovery regarding an affirmative defense of rent overcharge, citing irregularities in the rent registration history including significant unexplained rent increases. Applying the principles of *W. Pierre Assoc. LLC v. Harvey*, the court found ample need for discovery, noting that the tenancy and alleged overcharge occurred post-HSTPA and that investigation of the basis for substantial rent increases from 1995-1997 and 2010-2011 was necessary to determine the reliability of the base date rent. The court granted the tenant's motion for discovery, ordering production of relevant documents but striking interrogatories and one …

167 8th Ave. Llc V Goldstein

All Decisions

The Appellate Term reversed a money judgment and reinstated a tenant's rent overcharge defenses and counterclaims, remanding for reconsideration. While the appeal regarding possession was dismissed as moot due to the tenant's eviction, the monetary claims persisted. The court held that recent legislative amendments (L. 2024, Ch. 95 § 4) mandating a "totality of the circumstances" standard for fraudulent deregulation claims apply to pending cases. This new standard, more favorable to tenants, requires the lower court to determine if the landlord knowingly engaged in a fraudulent scheme to remove the apartment from rent stabilization.

Not So Firmly Settled: How The Inconsistent Jurisprudence Of The Firm Resettlement Bar Serves As A Tool For Asylum Seeker Exclusion, Caroline V. Garrido

Fordham Law Review

The firm resettlement bar to asylum, designed to limit protections to those without refuge elsewhere, has become a source of inconsistency, confusion, and exclusion in U.S. asylum law. Circuit courts have adopted two different approaches for determining whether an asylum seeker has firmly resettled in a third country. Despite the Board of Immigration Appeals’ attempt to unify these approaches through the introduction of a burden-shifting framework, courts remain divided, and there is no clear guidance on what constitutes firm resettlement. This Note argues that this lack of guidance has led to inconsistent court holdings and interpretations that conflict with the …

A True Fact Should Not Be Controversial: Analyzing The Zauderer Standard And Defining “Uncontroversial”, Edina Hartstein

Fordham Law Review

In Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized an exception to the compelled speech doctrine that allowed the government to regulate commercial speech if it was “purely factual and uncontroversial.” However, the Court failed to define what it meant for a disclosure to be “purely factual” or what it meant to be “uncontroversial.” This lack of clarity led to lower courts inconsistently applying the Zauderer standard. In 2018, the Supreme Court decided National Institute for Family Life & Advocates v. Becerra (NIFLA), which held that the Zauderer standard cannot apply when the disclosure …

Red, White-, And Blue-Collar Crime: Federal Sentencing Practices Among White-Collar And Blue-Collar Offenders, Henna Judge

Fordham Law Review

Under the current federal sentencing regime, district courts exercise immense amounts of discretion when sentencing. Though strict adherence to the U.S. Sentencing Commission Guidelines (the “Guidelines”) was once mandatory, courts must now use these Guidelines as an advisory starting point and make a series of fact-specific determinations when sentencing a defendant. Though judicial discretion in this realm aids in preventing undue reliance on Guidelines-range recommendations that can lack nuance, it also invites bias.

In recent years, scholars and courts alike have called attention to a potential disparity in the way blue-collar and white-collar offenders are sentenced. This Note examines relevant …

Separation-Of-Powers Lochnerism, Andrea Scoseria Katz

Fordham Law Review

One hundred and twenty years ago, in 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court rendered one of the single most notorious opinions in history, striking down a New York labor law for violating the right to contract—a right found nowhere in the text of the Constitution. Though the era of Lochner v. New York is well past us, the judicial impulses that gave rise to the case remain. With a new champion in the Roberts Court, Lochnerism is alive and well, deployed in a new context to redefine the relationships between the president, Congress, federal agencies, and the courts.

Bringing together two …

Ai Procurement As Regulatory Reconnaissance, Sam Adler

Fordham Law Review

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a black box technology in a black box industry. Some view AI as a life-changing technology capable of advancing society and perhaps even saving the world, while others fear its capacity to harm. Like Dr. Frankenstein, developers fear the unpredictability of their own creations; deployers fear the unknown risks of third-party AI tools that market pressures drive them to assume; members of civil society fear AI’s capacity to oppress the already oppressed and degrade trust in institutions; and everyday users fear the undisclosed potential of AI to cause harm by means they cannot readily comprehend. These …

The Equal Pay Act’S Hidden Loophole: Eliminating Prior Compensation As A “Factor Other Than Sex”, Madeleine Bol

Fordham Law Review

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA or the “Act”) prohibits employers from engaging in sex-based wage discrimination. The Act includes four exceptions that allow an employer to circumvent liability, the last of which allows for pay disparities when the “differential [is] based on any other factor other than sex.” The language of this exceedingly broad exception raises questions among courts on what “other than sex” entails—specifically, whether a court can rely on an employee’s prior compensation to justify a pay disparity between employees of the opposite sex. This Note examines how federal circuit courts have interpreted this catchall exception. …

Settling On A Standard: Reviewing The Right To Self-Representation, Lauren Lipson

Fordham Law Review

Courts appoint counsel for indigent criminal defendants who cannot afford legal representation to uphold their Sixth Amendment rights. In its seminal waiver case, Faretta v. California, the U.S. Supreme Court elevated the corollary right—the right to self-representation—to constitutional status. In dicta, the Court created a standard by which defendants must waive their right to counsel “knowingly and intelligently” to proceed pro se. The Court subsequently sculpted the right to self-representation as it came to standby counsel and mental competency, but it never prescribed a precise waiver colloquy for district court judges to administer, causing the Faretta colloquy to look …

Federal Courts, Class Actions, And The Jurisdictional Void, Courtney T. Welch

Fordham Law Review

To invoke the jurisdiction of a federal court, a plaintiff must satisfy the requirements of Article III. Among other things, Article III requires a plaintiff to have and maintain personal stake throughout the lifespan of the litigation. Though a simple premise, this constitutional requirement has a complicated history. This is especially true as applied to class action lawsuits, where plaintiffs bring claims both on behalf of themselves and other harmed individuals.

The U.S. Supreme Court has applied flexible rules to some—but not all—of Article III’s requirements in class actions. The breadth of this flexibility, though, is uncertain. Accordingly, so too …

Acmh, Inc. V. Williams

All Decisions

In this holdover proceeding, the court granted the tenant's summary judgment motion and dismissed the petition. The landlord, a supportive housing provider, failed to plead that the premises and tenancy are subject to OMH and DOHMH regulations, violating RPAPL § 741. The court noted the landlord's prior awareness of this pleading requirement, rejecting claims of inadvertence. It found significant prejudice to the unrepresented tenant due to this omission, which prevented proper adjudication. The landlord's cross-motion to amend the petition was denied.

417 E 9th Partners Llc And Witnick 417 E 9th St Llc V Agresti

All Decisions

In this holdover proceeding, the landlord, having already secured a judgment of possession and partial use and occupancy (U&O) after trial, moved for an additional money judgment for subsequent U&O and attorneys' fees. The tenant contended that MDL §302(1)(a) barred U&O collection due to a Certificate of Occupancy issue and that HSTPA amendments to RPAPL §702 precluded legal fees in summary proceedings. The court granted the landlord's motion, finding the U&O argument was barred by law of the case. It further held that RPAPL §702's intent was to prevent evictions for non-payment of fees mischaracterized as rent, not to prohibit …

Sweat And Subjectivity Copyright Impulses, Danny Friedmann

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Generative artificial intelligence (gAI) is generating vast vol- umes of content, including visual art with minimal human effort that competes directly with visual artists and threatens to dilute human culture in the process. In response, courts and copyright offices are quietly reintroducing two doctrines long considered incompatible with modern copyright: sweat of the brow, which rewards labor over originality, and aesthetic discrimination, which risks conditioning protection on perceived merit.

This article is the first to demonstrate how legal authorities are reintroducing these discredited doctrines under the guise of regulating AI-assisted outputs, thereby eroding the set of copyright doctrines accepted by …

How Ftc Data Security Cases Inform The Development Of Legally Accountable Software, Jeff Kosseff, Ellis Fenske, Christopher Brown, Daniel S. Roche

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Over the past two decades, the Federal Trade Commission has brought dozens of enforcement actions against companies for failing to adequately secure customers’ personal information. The actions typically result in a consent decree, in which the company agrees to improve its data security practices and provide the FTC with oversight of those improvements. When the FTC first brought data security cases, its orders generally required the companies to adopt “reasonable” data security programs. But a 2018 Eleventh Circuit opinion, LabMD v. FTC, requires the orders to contain far more specific data security requirements. In this Article, we conduct an in-depth …

All Bets Are On: Addiction, Prediction, Regulation, And The Future Of Financial Gambling, Sharon Rabinovitz, Nizan G. Packin

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

This Article challenges traditional financial regulation by exploring how prediction markets—initially developed as sophisticated tools for collective forecasting—increasingly resemble gambling venues. These platforms, once designed to harness crowd wisdom, have transformed into high-stakes ecosystems where engage- ment-driven features blur the boundary between forecasting and betting. This evolution presents a dual challenge: on one hand, certain platforms, including regulated ones, offer innovative avenues for price discovery and risk hedging; on the other, their gamblified design exposes users to significant behavioral and financial risks.

Through comprehensive empirical analysis of gamblification and self-determination manipulation across five prediction market interfaces, this Article demonstrates how …

Gladys Hampton Affordable Preservation, Llc. V. Goodwin

All Decisions

In this nonpayment proceeding, the tenant moved to consolidate several similar proceedings against the same landlord, citing common issues regarding VAWA compliance and the landlord's alleged failure to serve required HUD-5382 forms as a condition precedent. The landlord cross-moved for sanctions, alleging frivolous conduct. The court partially granted the tenant's motion to consolidate, combining cases in similar procedural postures involving the same building and petitioner. The court denied the landlord's cross-motion, finding the tenant's motion was not frivolous. The tenant's motion to dismiss the petitions was deferred and restored for a future status conference.

Aldus Green Company V. Beck

All Decisions

In this non-payment proceeding, the landlord's motion to restore the case and for a money judgment and warrant of eviction was denied. The court found that the landlord failed to provide a reasonable excuse for the significant delay of over 31 months in seeking restoration after the parties had previously settled the matter by stipulation. This period was well beyond the one-year statutory limit set by 22 NYCRR § 208.14(c). The court also considered the potential prejudice to the 71-year-old long-term rent-regulated tenant, noting that restoring the matter for judgment on years of unchallenged rent could be unfair.

Eqr-228 W. 71st Llc V. Ford

All Decisions

In this holdover proceeding alleging nuisance, the tenant moved for summary judgment, asserting the landlord failed to state a cause of action by not marking the specific good cause ground on the required GCEL notice, despite acknowledging the premises was subject to GCEL. The landlord argued GCEL applied only to non-renewal cases, not to terminations based on conduct. The court disagreed, holding that GCEL applies to all tenants in covered housing accommodations irrespective of lease expiration or tenancy type. Since the landlord failed to specify the applicable good cause basis in the GCEL notice, the tenant's motion for summary judgment …

Ramirez V. Garcia

All Decisions

In this nonrenewal of tenancy holdover proceeding, the landlord moved to strike the tenant's jury demand. The court granted the landlord's motion, holding that the tenant waived the right to a jury trial by asserting counterclaims seeking equitable relief, including a declaratory judgment to permanently reduce future rent from $1,300 to $725 and overcharge damages. The court found that the rent adjustment counterclaim was equitable in nature and not merely incidental to the demand for monetary damages, thus triggering a waiver of the jury trial right under CPLR § 4101.

East 93rd St Associates Lp V. Walters

All Decisions

In this nonpayment proceeding, the tenant moved for summary judgment seeking to bar the landlord from collecting rent under MDL § 302-a due to a rent-impairing violation and asserting a harassment counterclaim. The court denied summary judgment on the MDL § 302-a claim, ruling that the tenant failed to conclusively prove that HPD mailed the notice of violation to the landlord, a material element of the defense. The harassment claim, based on the landlord's repeated failure to make repairs, was also denied as an issue of fact existed regarding the tenant's alleged refusal to provide access. The case was adjourned …