11th St. Assocs. LLC v Trigubetz

[*1] 11th St. Assocs. LLC v Trigubetz 2014 NY Slip Op 51512(U) Decided on October 22, 2014 Appellate Term, First Department Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431. This opinion is uncorrected and will not be published in the printed Official Reports.

Decided on October 22, 2014
SUPREME COURT, APPELLATE TERM, FIRST DEPARTMENT
PRESENT: Schoenfeld, J.P., Shulman, Ling-Cohan, JJ.
570566/14

11th Street Assocs. LLC, Petitioner-Landlord-Appellant, -

against

Peter Trigubetz, Respondent-Tenant-Respondent, -and- "John Doe" and/or "Jane Doe," Respondents-Undertenants.

Landlord appeals from an order of the Civil Court of the City of New York, New York County (Sabrina B. Kraus, J.), entered on or about April 23, 2014, after a hearing, which denied its motion to execute upon a warrant of eviction issued pursuant to a stipulation settling a holdover summary proceeding.

Per Curiam.

Order (Sabrina B. Kraus, J.), entered on or about April 23, 2014, affirmed, with $10 costs.

Giving due deference to the fact and credibililty determinations made by Civil Court upon the full and fair compliance hearing held below, we sustain the court's ultimate finding that the elderly, disabled tenant did not materially breach the anti-clutter provisions of the June 2013 stipulation settling the underlying nuisance holdover proceeding. The court appropriately declined to give "great weight" to the hearing testimony offered by the landlord's lone witness, its managing agent, who readily acknowledged that he did not attend any of the several scheduled inspections of tenant's SRO unit authorized by the stipulations' terms, and, further, whose professed knowledge of the condition of tenant's unit was based solely upon observations made by him from the hallway adjacent to tenant's unit, and did not, so far as shown, take into account the "heavy duty" cleaning of the apartment undisputedly undertaken by adult protective services after commencement of the dispossess proceeding but before execution of the parties' settlement stipulation. Nor did the limited views of the unit provided by the few photographs taken by the managing agent from his hallway vantage point depict the type of extreme "Collyer" condition alleged in the underlying holdover petition, whose existence or reoccurrence would have given rise to the eviction remedy here sought by landlord. In all, we agree that a forfeiture of this tenant's long-term (30-plus year) tenancy is unwarranted on this record.

THIS CONSTITUTES THE DECISION AND ORDER OF THE COURT.

I concurI concurI concur
Decision Date: October 22, 2014