Fischer v. Taub

127 Misc. 2d 518, 491 N.Y.S.2d 538, 1984 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 3769
CourtAppellate Terms of the Supreme Court of New York
DecidedDecember 11, 1984
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 127 Misc. 2d 518 (Fischer v. Taub) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Terms of the Supreme Court of New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Fischer v. Taub, 127 Misc. 2d 518, 491 N.Y.S.2d 538, 1984 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 3769 (N.Y. Ct. App. 1984).

Opinion

OPINION OF THE COURT

Per Curiam.

Order entered July 16, 1984, insofar as appealed from, is reversed, with $10 costs; the respondents’ motion to dismiss the petitions in these consolidated proceedings is denied and the petitions are thus reinstated; the petitioners’ cross motion to dismiss the first and third affirmative defense and second counterclaim and to strike respondents’ jury demand is granted; and the matter is remanded to the Civil Court for further proceedings consistent herewith.

Petitioner Yolanda Fischer, Robert Fish, Henry Rausman, Anita Milch and Simon Abikhzen, collectively known as the operator of Lincoln Square Home for Adults, is the operator of a private proprietary adult care facility (Social Services Law § 2 [21], [25], [27]) located at 201 West 74th Street, New York, New York. In May 1973 the petitioner purchased these premises, which were then known and operated as the Kimberly Hotel, for the purpose of converting the hotel into an adult care facility. The hotel was completely vacated of all occupants by November 1973 and was thereafter renovated in accordance with plans filed by the petitioner with the State Board of Social Welfare. On December 11, 1975, after renovations were completed, the Department of Buildings issued a new certificate of occupancy in which the premises were classified as a “public building” and “domiciliary care facility”. On February 25,1976, the petitioner secured a certificate from the State Board of Social Welfare permitting operation of the premises as a “private proprietary home for adults” (Social Services Law § 460-b) and it has since operated in that capacity.

In December 1983, the petitioner decided to close this facility. To that end the petitioner, on December 11, 1983, pursuant to Social Services Law § 461-g (1) (e), voluntarily surrendered its operating certificate to the Department of Social Services (hereafter DSS). Social Services Law article 7 and regulations of the DSS, which are admittedly applicable to the petitioner, require that certain procedures be followed in connection with the closing of an adult care facility. Thus, notice of an intent to close a facility must be given the DSS; a plan for the orderly transfer of residents must be submitted to and approved by the DSS (18 NYCRR 486.10 [b]; 487.3 [g]); and the residents must be duly [521]*521notified of the proposed closing (18 NYCRR 487.5 [¶] [3]). Upon the completion of these procedures and in the event of refusal of residents to remove from the facility, Social Services Law § 461-h specifically provides that the operator of the facility may maintain a “[s]pecial proceeding for termination of adult home and residence for adults admission agreements”.

Upon the refusal of approximately 55 of the facility’s residents to voluntarily vacate the premises, the petitioner, pursuant to Social Services Law § 461-h, commenced these holdover proceedings against those residents and joined as a party respondent the DSS.

Parenthetically, a proceeding pursuant to CPLR article 78 had been commenced in the Supreme Court on behalf of residents of the Lincoln Square Home, in which the petitioning residents sought, inter alla, injunctive relief staying the prosecution in the Civil Court of holdover proceedings against the residents, appointment of a temporary receiver to operate the facility, and revocation of the Commissioner of Social Services’ approval of the relocation plan submitted by the operator of Lincoln Square Home. At the inception of the article 78 proceedings, the Supreme Court had refused to stay the operator of Lincoln Square Home from maintaining special proceedings in the Civil Court against residents of the home. On or about May 16, 1984 the balance of the relief sought by the residents in the article 78 proceeding was denied and the article 78 proceeding was dismissed (Shorter, J.). (Matter of Gale v Perales, NY County, index No. 2838/84.)

Simultaneously with the service of answers to the petitions, the individual respondents moved to dismiss these holdover proceedings upon a ground that the relationship between the petitioner and the individual respondents is that of landlord and tenant and that the premises are subject to the Rent Stabilization Law (RSL; Administrative Code of City of New York § YY51-1.0 et seq.) or, alternatively, the New York City Rent and Rehabilitation Law (Administrative Code § Y51-1.0 et seq.). The petitioner opposed the individual respondents’ motion to dismiss the petitions and cross-moved for dismissal of certain affirmative defenses and counterclaims in the individual respondents’ answers and to strike their jury demand.

In a decision dated April 24, 1984, the court below held (1) that the premises are a multiple dwelling (Multiple Dwelling Law § 4 [7]); (2) that although the facility is governed by the Social Services Law, the Social Services Law is “silent” as to [522]*522whether the Rent Stabilization Law applies to such premises; (3) that the Rent Stabilization Law does not expressly exempt “adult care facilities”; (4) that the petitioner facility has attributes of a hotel, in that it charges separately for meals provided the residents (the record actually reflects that the cost of meals provided the residents is included in a comprehensive charge), provides a reception desk, housekeeping, linen, laundry service, entertainment and activities programs and beauty and barber shops; (5) that the petitioner is “in fact” a hotel; (6) that, notwithstanding the renovation of the premises and the issuance of the current certificate of occupancy on December 11, 1975, the hotel was “erected” prior to June 1,1969; and (7) that since Administrative Code of the City of New York § YY51-3.1 extends rent stabilization to “dwelling units in all hotels except hotels erected after July first, nineteen hundred sixty-nine, whether classified as a Class A or a Class B multiple dwelling, containing six or more dwelling units, provided that the rent charged for the individual dwelling units on May thirty-first, nineteen hundred sixty-eight was not more than three hundred fifty dollars per month or eighty-eight dollars per week”,1 the petitioner, to be exempt from the RSL, must establish that rents charged for “individual dwelling units” in the building on May 31, 1968 were more than $350 per month or $88 per week.

The record before the court below at the time of the court’s April 24, 1984 decision contained no evidence as to rents of the premises’ “individual dwelling units” on May 31,1968, and the Civil Court, in its April 24, 1984 decision, while affording the parties an opportunity to secure such evidence, nevertheless granted the individual respondents’ motion to dismiss these special proceedings unless within the time frame provided by the court evidence was submitted “mandating another result”. In the context of this “conditional dismissal”, the Civil Court in its April 24, 1984 decision denied petitioner’s cross motions as moot. In an order entered July 16,1984, the court below deemed the petitioner’s further submission — which was devoid of evidence of rents charged for dwelling units on the premises on May 31, 1968 — as a motion for reargument, and granting reargument, the Civil Court adhered to its original decision of April 24, 1984, and granted the individual respondents’ motion to dismiss these proceedings.

[523]*523In our view, the Legislature never intended the RSL to apply to adult care facilities operating under the comprehensive statutory and regulatory scheme provided by Social Services Law article 7.

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Bluebook (online)
127 Misc. 2d 518, 491 N.Y.S.2d 538, 1984 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 3769, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/fischer-v-taub-nyappterm-1984.