Opinion
570990/13
12-01-2014
91 REAL ESTATE ASSOCIATES LLC, Petitioner–Landlord, v. Felice ESKIN, Respondent–Tenant–Respondent.
Law Offices of Santo Golino, New York City (Santo Golino of counsel), for appellant. Green & Cohen, P.C., New York City (Michael R. Cohen of counsel), for respondent.
Law Offices of Santo Golino, New York City (Santo Golino of counsel), for appellant.
Green & Cohen, P.C., New York City (Michael R. Cohen of counsel), for respondent.
Present: SCHOENFELD, J.P., SHULMAN, HUNTER, JR., JJ.
Opinion
PER CURIAM. Order (Sabrina B. Kraus, J.), entered June 4, 2013, affirmed, with $10 costs, for the reasons stated by Sabrina B. Kraus, J. at Civil Court.
The summary judgment record establishes that, following the building's conversion to cooperative ownership under a noneviction plan, tenant agreed to move from rent stabilized apartment 8E to apartment 9I—the latter apartment then temporarily exempt from stabilization protection based on the occupancy of the building's superintendent—and that tenant's relocation within the building came about at the prior landlord's initiative and request so as to allow it to join apartments 8E and 8F to create a single unit in anticipation of a sale of the combined unit to a prospective purchaser. Based on this factual scenario, and in view of landlord's failure to adduce any competent countervailing proof as to the cause or circumstances surrounding tenant's relocation, we agree that tenant's “rent-[stabilized] status transferred from the [eighth-] floor apartment to the [ninth-] floor apartment” (Saad v. Elmuza, 12 Misc.3d 57, 59, 818 N.Y.S.2d 414 [App.Term, 2d Dept.2006], citing Matter of Capone v. Weaver, 6 N.Y.2d 307, 189 N.Y.S.2d 833, 160 N.E.2d 602 [1959] ; see and compare Syndicate Bldg. Corp. v. Hide Trading Corp., 13 Misc.2d 473, 178 N.Y.S.2d 203 [App.Term, 1st Dept.1958] ). While the above-cited cases involved intra-building relocations by rent controlled, and not rent stabilized, tenants, we discern no significant distinction between the two regulatory schemes that would justify eschewing this sound precedent here, when to do so would result in the type of “disruptive practices” that both sets of rent laws were designed to avoid (see Rent Stabilization Law [Administrative Code of City of New York] § 26–501 ; McKinney's Uncons. Laws of N.Y. § 8581 [1 ] [Local Emergency Housing Rent Control Act]; see generally East 10th St. Assocs. v. Estate of Goldstein, 154 A.D.2d 142, 145, 552 N.Y.S.2d 257 [1990] ).
This Constitutes the Decision and Order of the Court.