On July 5, 2016, the Bakshis’ dog allegedly mauled a small dog owned by Felice Kobrick and bit the finger of Frances Drakes. The incident occurred in the street abutting the Bakshis’ property in Nassau County. A few days later, Kobrick’s dog was euthanized. The Drakes sued the Bakshis to recover damages for personal injuries. The Bakshis moved for summary judgment dismissing the complaint. Supreme Court granted the motion. To recover in strict liability for damages caused by a dog, a plaintiff must establish that the dog had vicious propensities and that the owner knew or should have known about…. Read more

Westchester Plaza Holdings, LLC filed a summary holdover proceeding to evict Gertrude Sherwood and her son, Sheldon Sherwood, on the ground that they had failed to cure their violation of the no-pet clause in the parties’ lease. Specifically, Westchester Plaza claimed that  the Sherwoods had violated their lease by harboring a dog without landlord’s permission. and sought a final judgment of possession of their rental apartment. Gertrude did not appear in the action. Sheldon appeared and asserted that the dog was an emotional support animal entitling him to keep  the pet in the apartment under the State’s Human Rights Law…. Read more

Virginia F. Kleist and Daniel Stern owned own lakefront properties within the Chautauqua Shores subdivision. All property owners were subject to covenants and restrictions that were filed in 1962, when the subdivision was developed. The covenants and restrictions give “each and every owner of land in [the subdivision] . . . the right to enforce the same by appropriate court proceedings.” In December 2014, Stern purchased his property with plans to demolish the existing house and build a much larger house. When Kleist saw the site plans for the new house, she notified Stern by letter in early August 2015… Read more

Heung C. Rha and Suhn O. Rha agreed to purchase the property located at 16-17 Bell Blvd., Bayside, New York from Alessio Blangiardo  pursuant to a contract signed on October 23, 2014. The Rhas obligations under the contract were conditioned upon their receipt of a written mortgage loan commitment on or before November 30, 2014. And the Rhas tendered a $110,000.00 down payment, which was deposited into nonparty Salvatore E. Strazzullo, Esq.’s escrow account. The contract included an Internal Revenue Code Section 1031 Exchange Addendum in which the parties acknowledged that the Rhas intended to purchase the property as part of… Read more

The end of June often sees “blockbuster” decisions by the Court of Appeals before the Summer recess. But the 2018/2019 Term ended “not with a bang but a whimper.” Decisions dealt with important but mundane matters: whether or not a coke oven was a product or a service for strict liability purposes; whether buildings in Lower Manhattan that received certain tax benefits were subject to luxury rent deregulation; and whether an earlier and undocketed judgment of divorce was superior to a later and docketed judgement based on an arbitration award. Matter of Eighth Judicial District Asbestos Litigation 2019 NY Slip… Read more

Phyllis Kossoff, a 92-year-old woman, lived in an apartment at 910 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan since 1966. After the building was converted into a coop, Kossoff and her husband became proprietary lessees of their unit. A recent dispute arose about whether Kossoff or the coop was responsible for replacing and paying for the replacement of the balcony windows and sills of the unit. On March 22, 2018 Kossoff was approached by the coop and asked whether she was interested in selling her apartment to another shareholder who lived on her floor. Kossoff said she was not interested in selling her… Read more

A recent lawsuit resulted from an ongoing quarrel, between neighbors in a Washington Avenue co-op apartment building, over who owned a 2-foot by 20-foot strip of a shared rooftop terrace. Justin Theroux (Apt. 2B) filed a complaint against Norman J. Resnicow and Barbara Resnicow, his downstairs neighbors (Apt.1A), for allegedly depriving Theroux of his right to enjoy his property. Theroux contended that the Resnicows had engaged in a malicious and years-long harassment campaign that included frivolously challenging the boundary line between Theroux’s and the Resnicows’ shared roof deck. Under the co-op offering plan, the Resnicows had the right to use… Read more

Plaintiff (Natalya) and Defendant (Semen) were married in June 1997. They purchased a home in Valley Stream in September 1997. Semen filed for a divorce in Russia in November 2012 and was awarded a divorce in December 2012. The parties lived together in the home until January or February 2013. When Natalya returned from a trip to Russia in January or February 2013, she found that the locks had been changed. In November 2014, Natalya started an action to partition the home. The complaint alleged that Semen was in possession of the home and that he had refused to allow… Read more

Copyright by, and republished with permission of, Habitat Magazine. It’s not only the sleek new condominium towers rising along Billionaires’ Row that offer priceless views of Central Park. At the venerable Essex House Condominium on Central Park South, an Art Deco gem that first opened as a hotel in 1931, two unit-owners recently fought a court battle royale when one owner blocked a sliver of the other’s coveted view of Central Park. The case revolved around an intriguing question: just how much is a view of Central Park worth? In 2008, a company called ESX purchased two adjacent units on the… Read more

As the 2018/2019 Term approached the “homestretch”, the Court of Appeals published a “blockbuster” 4-to-3 decision holding that a commercial tenant-to-be, represented by counsel, could waive the right to prosecute a declaratory judgment action and seek Yellowstone relief; another 4-3 ruling with respect to personal jurisdiction over the Ohio firearms’ salesman of a gun used in a New York homicide; and a 6-1 opinion relating to strict liability for design defects. Consistent with a recent trend, all three cases featured unusually strident dissents. 159 MP Corp. v. Redbridge Bedford, LLC 2019 NY Slip Op 03526 Decided on May 7, 2019… Read more