I am the tenant of an unregulated apartment in downtown Manhattan.
After a series of appearances before the judge, her order on June 17 read:
"Respondent has shown no ability to pay rent arrears through June 30 of $9,000. Therefore the motion is denied, all stays are vacated. No further Notice of Eviction is Required."
I was able to obtain what is probably my last Order to Show Cause by showing I had $6,000, or about 2/3 of the arrears thru June 30.
On June 28, I went back to court with the $6000 certified check - when we went in front of the judge, the LL's attorney stated that the "$9000 arrears through June 30" in the June 17 document was wrong, and that the figure was actually $14,000.
The judge wrote that "the arrears as stated in the June 17 Order were incorrect, the correct arrears thru June 30 is $14,000. Respondent shows no ability to pay". She also said that she could not give me any more time, that "her hands were tied".
It all happened very fast.
Obviously I arrived at court prepared to address the $6,000 arrears. I was completely surprised by the revised amount and had no opportunity to prepare for or respond to that.
I was able to find two similar cases on tenant.net - in one case ( ), the LL made an error in figuring the "arrears" on the Stip itself, calculating the arrears as being less than the tenant actually owed. When the LL realized the error and tried to amend the stip, the court found that the LL "could not escape the consequences of his own careless actions", and the tenant was permitted to pay the lower amount, as initially set forth in the Stip.
In another (603-607 Realty Associates v. Etienne), the landlord's initial rent demand was defective by seeking too much rent. When the LL tried to fix this, he asserted to the court that the correction would be in the Tenant's favor and should be allowed. Nevertheless, the tenant's motion to dismiss was granted and the petition was dismissed without prejudice to service of a proper rent demand.
While neither of these two cases are perfect in comparison to the present situation, these cases do at least establish that a LL cannot necessarily correct a careless error it has made, without consequences.
Is there a basis to dismiss this case since the LL and his attorney have given two conflicting amounts for the arrears, and the judge has included these different amounts in her decisions?
If so, should this be done with another OSC, or should I file an Appeal in the Appellate Court?