ConstitutionalCarrot t1_itluhpu wrote
I worked opposite these guys for years. They tried to engage in some collective bargaining a few years ago but what they can squeeze out from the city is never going to be enough for the work load.
Tenancy rights are only getting more complicated, so it’s really not the kind of job you can hire right out of law school for, except those are the only applicants legal aid can afford to hire.
Their main tact is to bury LL attnys in paperwork - they shared work product, always throw in legal fee claims for themselves, frivolous dismissal motions for lack of subject matter jurisdiction (in housing court!) - but it backfired because LL attnys can just drop the case without prejudice, started hiring law school graduates just to respond to papers for half the salary of legal aid, etc.
Sea_Sand_3622 t1_itlysba wrote
Story one Brooklyn landlord told me ten years ago , that a squatter who jumped into the empty bed of an old rent controlled tenant who had dementia that their legal aid defense was that the 35 year old female squatter had a romantic relationship with the 80 year demented female tenant. Then the legal aid lawyer changed it to .. oops … sorry judge …. They actually have a mother daughter type relationship even though the lawyer and squatter couldn’t tell the court which nursing home the old lady was put into. Took a year for the marshal to come to throw her out .
SenorJuansie t1_itm5j49 wrote
> one landlord told me ten years ago
sure, there's no one more reliable than a landlord trying to recover a rent controlled apartment that he can gut and rent for $7500/mo.
Sea_Sand_3622 t1_itm6bzo wrote
Yeah you’re right …. Why would any responsible property manager not completely renovate an apartment that has seen no improvements in 60+ years ? It makes no sense at all.
OverlordXenu t1_itm8q61 wrote
you see, they were actually supposed to be maintained and updated over those 60 years, but scum landlords routinely refuse to provide even basic maintenance for the apartment. the landlord's own illegal neglect should not enable them to deregulate an apartment.
Sea_Sand_3622 t1_itmft1n wrote
You just don’t get it , “basic “?
Install a bathroom while the $250/ tenant is still living there.
This apartment was probably in 1940 shit condition because it’s from 1940!!! if not 1920 !!!!
The wiring was 60+ years old , no closets , the kitchen cabinets are wood falling apart. The apartment is completely painted with lead paint.
Lucky the whole house wasn’t burnt down in the 1960s and 1970s. Or worse , the city could of foreclosed on it and they would of been running it until it caved in the 1980s and then demolished it and sold to a politically connected developer.
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KaiDaiz t1_itn3vos wrote
They were prob maintained to the code 60 yrs ago or whenever tenant signed original lease that's reflective in the rent. Most of the modern codes and required updates don't go into effect until you do renovations. Till then, its only repair as needed if violate something not replace.
SenorJuansie t1_itm6vr7 wrote
i don't understand your clap back.
i've done dozens of succession cases, and in every single one the landlord claims the successor is a johnny come lately or a scammer, etc. landlords are full of shit.
Sea_Sand_3622 t1_itm8nzs wrote
My friend on the upper west side , she was rent stabilized and when the building went coop in the late 1980s , she bought her apartment at the insider price . The older rent controlled husband and wife in the apartment directly below hers did not buy , they stayed at the cheap rent controlled rent . The husband dies in @1996, the wife gets sick in 2002, and moves to New Jersey to live with her daughter, but her grandson jumps into her now empty bed. The managing agent for the original still owner of the apartment take the grandmother to court for non primary. The grandmother via a free legal aid lawyer that the grandson found initially claims he’s in the apartment to help out the grandmother. She’s in outpatient rehab in nj and will be back living in the apartment soon. Then they change the story and he claims succession rights saying he’s been in the apartment for three years , living there and helping his grandmother, there was a trial , he had almost no paper trail to the apartment. 5 residents , including my friend testified that they never saw him and his grandmother together . He had a free legal aid lawyer or some kind of community center low fee cheap lawyer.
You tell me who are the gamers of the system and who represents them for free. A complete waste of court time for this scammer. My friend was a bit reluctant to testify but the grandson was a complete ahole. Everyone in the building hated him. He asked people to testify for him and no one knew who he was. They all knew the grandmother. He was responsible for her leaving to get her bed empty. He was a deadbeat .
soyeahiknow t1_ito0cc6 wrote
Did he lose?
ConstitutionalCarrot t1_itnfi1p wrote
Succession claims are the tenant’s burden to prove precisely because the landlord would not have enough information to know whether the relative has stayed with the tenant long enough to be entitled to succeed. Even if the tenant has a valid claim, they apparently never sought to be named as a co-tenant on the lease, despite claiming to have lived there for 2 years.
SenorJuansie t1_itpqmeb wrote
c'mon now. no landlord would ever willingly add a non spouse to an rs lease for a valuable apartment.
ConstitutionalCarrot t1_itpxnsp wrote
Why not? They get someone else on the hook for the rent and tenancy obligations and it’s not like if they get rid of the prime tenant they can drastically increase the rent if it is a rent stabilized apartment. They’d either have to spend $$$ litigating the successor’s claim or time and $$ finding a new tenant who would be sbj to the same RGB increases anyway.
Again, it would not matter if the LL rejected the request to add the relative because it is the successor’s burden to prove they asked. If they cannot meet that extremely low bar, set by statute, then maybe they are the ones full of shit.
SenorJuansie t1_itm5dn3 wrote
lol, show me a landlord's petition that doesn't include a claim for legal fees.
also
> it backfired because LL attnys can just drop the case without prejudice
that's not backfiring; and you can't just drop w/o prejudice if tenant has answered. i've had plenty of repairs cases that have carried on long after the landlord's nonpay cause of action had evaporated.
ConstitutionalCarrot t1_itm6qh0 wrote
My firm represented non-for profit landlords, we drafted our own petitions and did not seek legal fees, the leases we drafted never had legal fee clauses, and so the reciprocal fee provision under RPL 234 never was actionable. But that’s just my point they don’t look at the papers and just use their form motions, throwing in everything under the sun.
Most of the time legal aid would make pre-answer dismissal motions, (dismissal after an answer is treated as summary judgment, which is a higher burden). Even if they agreed in multiple stips to submit answers by a date certain, they would resist filing an answer (even just a general denial) literally until the judge transfers the case to the trial part to preserve their right to a pre-answer dismissal.
If the tenant has asserted a counter-claim it’s not dismissal as of right, but an overworked legal aid attorney would just stip to discontinue without prejudice to any remaining balance and reserve their right to claim repairs in the future and advise the tenant to call 311. Better than keeping the possessory judgment alive on the off chance tenant misses a payment by the next court appearance. In an HP case for repairs started by the tenant, sure, the LL can’t discontinue, but it’s because the tenant is the plaintiff.
Legal aid’s impetus is just to draw out the case so their client remains in possession for longer. Then they complain about how many cases are clogging the docket as if they have no control over the situation.
SenorJuansie t1_itm7sgm wrote
> the leases we drafted never had legal fee clauses, and so the reciprocal fee provision under RPL 234 never was actionable. But that’s just my point they don’t look at the papers and just use their form motions
okay, you're right. that's sloppy. although if there's an RS issue and the possibility of overcharge, you can get fees, as you know.
> resist filing an answer
i've never seen or done this. usually the tenant has already answered pro se, so it's irrelevant. what agency would do this?
ConstitutionalCarrot t1_itm8r0s wrote
Overcharge can entitle a tenant to recovery of treble damages, but whether and to what extent a tenant’s attorney would be entitled to a cut of those enhanced damages would depend on the retainer agreement. Also, legal fees, late fees, etc. are not technically part of the rent overcharge calculation and should be severed to a plenary action.
Even if a tenant files a pro se answer, once they get an attorney, the attorney can move for leave to file an amended answer, saying that the tenant did not know all their rights at the time they filed pro se. They have to attach the proposed amended answer to that motion, but once the motion is granted they can “forget” to then file that answer until the eve of trial.
You’d also be surprised how many people aren’t willing to stand on line half a day to file that initial answer when they know they can show up after a default is entered against them and do a stip or get a 1st adjournment to seek counsel.
SenorJuansie t1_itmawm2 wrote
> they can “forget” to then file that answer until the eve of trial.
well...i dunno how bad that is. i've defenitely done this, and i've had LL side opponents do the same thing in HP actions or supreme court. I wouldn't really call that prejudicial. and i don't think it has anything to do with how seriously a dispositive motion will be taken.
SenorJuansie t1_itmad8j wrote
> but whether and to what extent a tenant’s attorney would be entitled to a cut of those enhanced damages would depend on the retainer agreement.
That has nothing to do with whether you assert a claim for attorney's fees, and a free lawyer is equally entitled to assert a claim for fees as anyone else. i'm sure you know the case law that says that.
i'll tell you my insider experience: i've only once gone far enough to do a fees hearing after winning trial rather than bargaining away fees at an earlier junction. i then settled by waiving the fees in exchange for T getting a few months free. higher ups at my agency approved this. if i had taken the fees, they would have gone to my agency 100%.
ConstitutionalCarrot t1_itmbl7u wrote
Maybe I didn’t my understand why you brought up overcharge claims then, because I’m not saying they can never seek legal fees, but that they don’t do their due diligence on whether they would actually be able to recover legal fees under the RPL before stating a claim.
It is just another delay tactic - they don’t have to reserve their right to seek it to be able to recover at or even after trial, the individual attorney won’t benefit from it, as you point out, and they agency doesn’t usually consider it worth their time to pursue unless it’s a very involved case, since they just get paid from the municipality and will never go under like a private firm would.
SenorJuansie t1_itmccaj wrote
> and will never go under like a private firm would.
i understand landlord's outrage over this. the LL firms had a lean system in housing court based on pro se opponents and zero substantive litigation occuring.
but i'm not sympathetic to it at all. i don't agree that most tenant's side litigation is frivolous, and as for delay, that is the standard for defendant-side litigation since the beginning of time. And i've done plenty of affirmative cases against the usual players in the landlord's bar (in private practice), and they can delay and waste my client's money as good as any defense lawyer.
ConstitutionalCarrot t1_itmf4l0 wrote
Sure, and all this is why I left L&T practice, but then legal aid still doesn’t have a leg to stand on to complain that they are overworked and underpaid when they could prioritize those cases where real defenses exist on the facts, against actual slumlords who are breaking the law.
They are incentivized to take this tact as to all cases, however, as they are in a position that benefits uniquely from delay since it allows their client to remain in possession without paying legal fees and often without paying rent.
When LL attnys delay it prejudices their clients who are actually paying legal fees, such that the cost of litigation is weighed against the benefit of proceeding with a frivolous case.
Ultimately, and this is what I would always discuss with the legal aid attorneys outside of court, the system benefits the attorneys on both sides. Legal aid just likes to take a bit more umbrage, in my experience.
SenorJuansie t1_itmbmz2 wrote
and to clarify, by 'repairs case' i mean nonpays where i alleged conditions in the apartment; not an hp action
Mortigi t1_itndrjg wrote
Do you mean to infer that these attorneys want to be paid more?
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