Nowillo v Leon

[*1] Nowillo v Leon 2015 NY Slip Op 51082(U) Decided on July 14, 2015 Appellate Term, Second 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 This opinion is uncorrected and will not be published in the printed Official Reports.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 July 14, 2015
SUPREME COURT, APPELLATE TERM, SECOND DEPARTMENT, 2d, 11th and 13th JUDICIAL DISTRICTS
PRESENT: : ELLIOT, J.P., PESCE and SOLOMON, JJ.
2013-2621 Q C

Luis Nowillo, Respondent, July 14, 2015

against

Bolivar Leon, JANET LEON and CARLOS ROJAS, Appellants.

Appeal from an order of the Civil Court of the City of New York, Queens County (Anne Katz, J.), dated May 20, 2013. The order denied tenants' motion to dismiss the petition in a holdover summary proceeding.

ORDERED that the order is affirmed, without costs.

In this owner-occupancy holdover proceeding (see Rent Stabilization Code [RSC] [9 NYCRR] § 2524.4 [a]), tenants appeal from an order denying their motion to dismiss the petition based on the alleged insufficiency of the nonrenewal notice.

Landlord's notice of nonrenewal identified the premises to be recovered, the date by which tenants were to vacate, the identity of the person (landlord) to occupy the premises as his primary residence, as well as the following facts, among others, which establish the ground for the premises' recovery: that the 78-year-old landlord had been sleeping on the couch in his daughter's living room, in Manhattan, for the past year, which situation had become untenable, and that landlord performed all of the maintenance for the building he owns in Queens, since he did not have the financial resources to hire maintenance workers, and living in the building would mean that he no longer had to travel to and from Manhattan on an almost daily basis. The foregoing assertions clearly satisfy the relevant notice requirements (see RSC § 2524.2 [b]).

There is no merit to tenants' argument that the notice of nonrenewal indicates that landlord's intended use of the apartment "is fleeting in nature." Moreover, "[t]he "absence of the words primary residence'—a legal term of art—is not fatal to the efficacy of a preliminary notice in an owner occupancy proceeding . . . . Ultimately, this is an element to be established at trial" (Teichman v Ciapi, 160 Misc 2d 182, 183 [App Term, 1st Dept 1994]).

Accordingly, the order is affirmed.

Elliot, J.P., Pesce and Solomon, JJ., concur.

Decision Date: July 14, 2015