By Laurie Villanueva
In New York City, the most hated group of individuals besides criminals and real estate brokers are landlords. Despite many landlords putting an extreme amount of attention and care into providing housing, repairs and work to ensure New Yorkers enjoy habitable dwelling and a pleasant living experience, they still get the worst rap.
Yet Adam Leitman Bailey, P.C. flipped this narrative on its head when the firm tackled a years-long intensive class-action case on behalf of a landlord facing a tenants’ association. The case exemplified how bad actors can exploit the legal system and harmful pre-existing public perceptions for personal gain.
The class action initially involved 19 tenants living throughout six buildings on Tiemann, Claremont, La Salle and West 149th streets. The tenants used pro bono services from one of the largest mega law firms in New York and a legal aid organization to levy their complaints.
The tenants association invoked two causes of action in their complaint: violation of the New York Consumer Protection law, N.Y. General Business Law § 349(a), and violation of New York City’s anti-harassment law, N.Y.C. Admin. Code § 27-2005(d). Their allegations included claims of a widespread state of disrepair across the six buildings, improper overcharges and rent demands, and even landlord harassment.
The mega law firm representing the association filed the initial complaint in 2013 in tandem with a press release, and the plaintiffs’ counsel spread news of the allegations to local politicians and banks that worked with the landlords. The plaintiffs’ counsel also named the four owners of the landlord group personally in the complaint even though corporations owned the buildings, embarrassing them and tarnishing their reputation. This demonstrated the plaintiffs’ counsel’s underlying motivation to capitalize on the positive publicity of representing the “little guy” tenant against purported building owner injustice.
Yet not all was as the complaint made it seem. One tenant had previously faced legal action for selling drugs, and another was illegally subletting their unit in violation of NYC’s rent stabilization code. Some of the tenants violated the laws by not living in their apartments for more than half the year. Another said in a deposition that they had an overwhelmingly positive relationship with his landlord and never had any problems.
And though the landlord were painted as malicious profiteers and negligent building managers in the complaint, in reality, testimony showed that they put exemplary effort into upkeep for each of the units. They responded to maintenance requests within 24 hours, and continued following up even when tenants would refuse to allow staffers into their units to complete repairs.
Adam Leitman Bailey, P.C. also represented the landlord in legal actions against the tenants who were selling drugs out of their units and illegally subletting before the class-action complaint was filed. These same tenants joined the class-action case and claimed the landlords’ necessary legal action against them was “harassment.”
When tenant complaints like this arise, landlords often opt for the simpler route of paying out settlement dollars regardless of culpability. This landlord, however, not only recognized the frivolity of the claims, but also the long-term reputational damages they would face if they simply paid for the case to end without vindicating themselves in the press. That’s why they enlisted Adam Leitman Bailey, P.C. for representation in their legal battle.
Adam Leitman Bailey, P.C. began by sending out lengthy document requests to plaintiffs’ counsel to check every facet of the plaintiffs’ claims, including medical record requests for those who claimed the state of disrepair in their apartments were exacerbating health issues. Plaintiffs’ counsel fought Adam Leitman Bailey and his team at every step in the discovery process, drawing out the case for years. The documents plaintiffs’ counsel did cough up undermined, and in some instances contradicted, the tenants’ claims.
It even became clear that plaintiffs’ counsel failed to properly research the laws pertaining to the harassment claims. The outstanding claims involved one of the landlord’s employees failing to make timely repairs and attempting to buy tenants out of their units, but the laws classifying those actions as actual harassment were enacted many years after the tenants alleged they occurred. Therefore, Adam Leitman Bailey and his team argued the tenants association’s harassment claims were on a faulty legal basis and the harassment statutes they cited could not apply to their case.
Adam Leitman Bailey repeatedly pushed plaintiffs’ counsel to stop wasting everyone’s money and time on the proceedings that were increasingly proving to be meritless, but the mega law firm wouldn’t budge. Many tenants saw through counsel’s blatant push to continue gaining clout by drawing out the case without signs of actual profit for those they represented, so tenants began dropping out until there were only six left in the case.
Once counsel completed the last of the 10 depositions involved in the case nearly a decade after it was initiated, Adam Leitman Bailey moved for summary judgment, asking for a full dismissal based on the steps the landlords took to ensure quality living in their buildings and the inapplicability of the harassment laws to the tenants’ claims. Adam Leitman Bailey presented the case.
“My adversaries argue the harassment laws (that are in effect) from 2017 should be applied to this case. The complaint – the complaint is from 2013. In the 2013 (lawsuit) they don’t actually mention harassment laws … the (harassment laws that have passed) don’t have any penalties. The laws only provide for injunctive relief. You can’t receive monetary damages; you can’t receive money, yet,” Adam Leitman Bailey argued in court. “The laws today allow plaintiffs to receive money, a thousand dollars or compensatory damages … But at the time in 2013 when the complaints – and all the complaints and the testimony in the depositions that they’ve attached and in their complaints, which the complaint has not been amended since 2013, and has not proposed to be amended, is stuck in time. It is ten years later now and it’s too late to be amended or changed…So Plaintiffs are bound by the 2013 laws and whatever the remedies are allowed in that year.” (Argument is condensed and refined).
After Adam Leitman Bailey made the case before Justice Suzanne J. Adams, the plaintiffs’ counsel had the gall to request to delay the case further to submit their reply, absurdly blaming Bailey and his team for failing to inform them of the harassment laws that rendered their case unwinnable.
In the end, the delay request could not save the case for the remaining plaintiffs. Justice Adams adopted all of Adam Leitman Bailey, P.C.’s arguments and ordered summary judgment on all counts in September 2023, a whole decade after the case began.
“The definition of harassment is set forth in detail in N.Y.C. Admin. Code § 27-2004(a)(48). The only opposing affidavits of persons with knowledge…do not allege any acts by defendants that could be considered harassment under the statute, and as such fail to create any significant issues of fact warranting denial of the motion,” Justice Adams wrote in her decision. “None of these affidavits set forth any allegedly harassing actions that occurred after 2013, and all state that their pre-2013 repair requests were eventually resolved, which is consistent with each of these plaintiffs’ deposition testimony.”
While the landlord saw the retribution that they spent years fighting for come to fruition in court, the plaintiffs’ counsel’s use of the press to tarnish their reputation worked. Because the mega law firm informed the banks Adam Leitman Bailey, P.C.’s clients worked with, they continued having difficulty obtaining loans and were forced into a special program where they had to get a punitive certificate to apply for a property rehab permit.
In situations like this, Adam Leitman Bailey understands that a good attorney’s work doesn’t end in court. He ensured copies of the judge’s decisions went to the politicians who were most vocal about the case and to the clients’ banks, which allowed the landlords to make inroads on refinancing.
“It required a lot of unneeded energy, stress, and time, but business did continue,” Adam Leitman Bailey said.
Though the landlords had a satisfactory result and avoided settlements, it’s impossible to quantify the effect of bad publicity. However, Adam Leitman Bailey, P.C. fought to demonstrate the owners were respectable building managers. Owners that took care of its residents' needs year after year, preserving an excellent reputation among the buildings’ residents and the community in perpetuity.
The author has been asked not to name the landlord as its reputation has already been harmed publicly for many years in association with this case.
