520 East 81st Street Associates v. State

19 A.D.3d 24, 799 N.Y.S.2d 1, 2005 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 4056
CourtAppellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
DecidedApril 19, 2005
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 19 A.D.3d 24 (520 East 81st Street Associates v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
520 East 81st Street Associates v. State, 19 A.D.3d 24, 799 N.Y.S.2d 1, 2005 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 4056 (N.Y. Ct. App. 2005).

Opinion

OPINION OF THE COURT

Saxe, J.

Over a decade ago, it was determined that the Legislature’s enactment of chapter 940 of the Laws of 1984 constituted a regulatory taking by the State of apartment building units leased to Lenox Hill Hospital for sublease to the hospital’s employees (see Manocherian v Lenox Hill Hosp., 84 NY2d 385 [1994]). Claimant was among the apartment owners to which the holding was applicable. When claimant then brought the present action, the Court of Claims determined that claimant was entitled to an award of compensation for the taking, pursuant to the Just Compensation Clause of the United States and New York State Constitutions (US Const 5th Amend; NY Const, art I, § 7 [a]). On appeal, the Court of Appeals held that just compensation must include the interest claimant would have earned on the sale proceeds had the taking not occurred, calculated from the time of the taking (99 NY2d 43, 48 [2002]). The question that has now arisen in this lengthy litigation, one of first impression in this state, is whether a nine-year delay in obtaining just compensation warrants an award of compound rather than simple interest to the aggrieved property owner.

As explained by the Court of Appeals (id. at 44-45), claimant was the owner of a 163-unit apartment building located at 520 East 81st Street in Manhattan. The building was converted to condominium ownership in 1981, and Lenox Hill Hospital, the primary lessee of 39 rent-stabilized apartments in the building which it in turn subleased to hospital employees, declined to purchase its units. Claimant therefore remained the owner of those units. Although the Omnibus Housing Act, enacted in [26]*261983 (L 1983, ch 403), prohibited rent-stabilized tenants from subletting for more than two years out of a four-year period preceding the termination of the sublease, or without the landlord’s permission (Rent Stabilization Law [Administrative Code of City of NY] § 26-511 [c] [12] [f]; Real Property Law 226-b [2]), Lenox Hill continued to sublet its 39 apartments yearly. Accordingly, claimant began to terminate the Lenox Hill leases, the last of which would have expired and been subject to termination on July 31, 1985.

In an effort to protect Lenox Hill Hospital’s interest in continuing to lease the apartments at issue (see Manocherian, 84 NY2d 385, 391 [1994], citing Senate Debates, NY Senate Bill S 9983, June 28, 1994), in 1984 the Legislature enacted chapter 940 of the Laws of 1984, applicable to not-for-profit hospitals, providing that “their employee subtenants would be deemed qualified primary tenants for purposes of lease renewal” (99 NY2d at 45). In a legal challenge brought by another building owner that also leased apartments to Lenox Hill Hospital, the statute was ultimately found to be unconstitutional, in that it did not advance a legitimate state interest, and constituted an impermissible taking of property (see id. at 45-46; Manocherian, 84 NY2d at 393, 398).

Claimant then commenced this action to obtain money damages, divided into three categories: interest that would have been earned on the proceeds from the sale of the 39 units had it not been precluded from selling them by the statute, calculated from August 1, 1985, the date it would have been able to sell them; the diminution in value of the property during the nine-year period until the statute was struck down; and the operating losses sustained during that period with respect to the apartments. After trial, the court found that the value of the units at the time of the taking in 1985 was $3,264,996, but had decreased to $2,632,496 in October 1994, when the statute was found to be unconstitutional, and awarded claimant damages for the loss in value, $632,500; it also awarded claimant $343,950 for operating losses. However, it rejected the claim for lost interest that could have been earned on the full sale price of the units beginning August 1, 1985 (see 99 NY2d at 46). This determination was modified by the Court of Appeals with the explanation that “lj]ust compensation requires that claimant be awarded interest on the 1985 sale proceeds from the date the deprivation occurred” (id. at 48). The Court therefore directed that “upon remittal, the Court of Claims should determine and then apply [27]*27the appropriate rate of return on the 1985 sale proceeds over the nine-year takings period” (id.).

At the new trial, claimant offered the testimony of a managing director at the Bank of New York, who posited that a reasonably prudent investor with $3,264,996 on August 1, 1985, employing a conservative investment strategy, would have invested in a diversified portfolio of reasonably risked public and private securities. The representative combination of investments he examined for this purpose was a combination of Standard & Poor’s 500 Index stocks (weighted 60%) and the government and investment grade corporate bonds comprised in the Lehman Aggregate Index of bonds (weighted 40%). Claimant’s expert testified to the rate at which such a portfolio would have earned interest in each of the years at issue. Moreover, in calculating the cumulative return on the investment year by year, to arrive at the total amount this initial investment would have earned over the approximately nine-year takings period, the expert made his calculations on the assumption that this reasonably prudent investor would have reinvested the interest earned. He concluded that claimant, investing the sale proceeds in such a portfolio and reinvesting the interest earned each year would have earned a total return of 194% by October 20, 1994.

The trial court concluded that the yearly rates of return set forth by claimant’s expert on the hypothetical portfolio provided a proper basis for calculating the rate of return to be applied over the takings period. Because those rates fluctuated significantly over the years, the court used the median of all the rates, 11%, as the rate to apply in calculating the interest on the value of the property to which claimant was entitled as just compensation for the taking. However, it declined to compound the interest, explaining that the only basis for doing so was the expert’s assumption that any amount earned would be reinvested.

For the reasons that follow, we hold that the calculation of interest should have been compounded for the takings period.

When the Court of Appeals remanded this matter for a further award representing the interest lost on the full value of the property, it explained the important concept that, “[u]nder just compensation principles, the proper calculation of damages therefore must put claimant, as close as possible, in the same position it would have been in had the apartments been sold in 1985” (99 NY2d at 48). As the Court further explained, for this purpose interest serves a somewhat different purpose than it does when applied to the amount of a judgment. “Interest in [28]*28this context is not an award of prejudgment interest on a liquidated sum in the traditional sense, but is a measure of the rate of return on the property owner’s money had there been no delay in payment” (id., quoting Sintra, Inc. v City of Seattle, 131 Wash 2d 640, 656, 935 P2d 555, 563 [1997]).

“Compound interest” is interest paid on both principal and previously accumulated interest; at the end of each interest period, the accrued interest is added to the principal for purposes of future calculations of interest (see 72 NY Jur 2d, Interest and Usury § 2; Black’s Law Dictionary 817 [7th ed]).

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Bluebook (online)
19 A.D.3d 24, 799 N.Y.S.2d 1, 2005 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 4056, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/520-east-81st-street-associates-v-state-nyappdiv-2005.