In re New Jersey Window Sales, Inc.

189 Misc. 2d 528, 735 N.Y.S.2d 724, 2001 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 437
CourtNew York Supreme Court
DecidedOctober 16, 2001
StatusPublished

This text of 189 Misc. 2d 528 (In re New Jersey Window Sales, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New York Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
In re New Jersey Window Sales, Inc., 189 Misc. 2d 528, 735 N.Y.S.2d 724, 2001 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 437 (N.Y. Super. Ct. 2001).

Opinion

[529]*529OPINION OF THE COURT

Edward H. Lehner, J.

The central issue before me is whether the mechanic’s lien filed herein is valid when filed in 2000 by a New Jersey entity which was incorporated in 1984 but dissolved in 1990 by the New Jersey Secretary of State for failure to pay taxes, and which has never qualified to do business in New York although it did a significant volume of business here.

On February 4, 2000 a mechanic’s lien in the amount of $258,494 was filed by Precision Specialist Metal & Glass, Inc. (Precision) for labor performed in installing windows at Alfred Lerner Hall on the campus of Columbia University. Pursuant to Lien Law § 17, the lien was extended for another year by notice filed on January 18, 2001. The notice of lien showed the business address of Precision as being in Passaic, New Jersey. The labor was performed by Precision pursuant to a contract with New Jersey Window Sales, Inc. (Sales).

Before me is a motion by Sales to discharge the lien on the grounds that at the time of the lien filing Precision was not in existence because on June 26, 1990 it was dissolved in New Jersey for failure to pay taxes, and because the notice of lien did not comply with Lien Law § 9.

The president of Precision avers that he was unaware of the dissolution until the making of this motion. Precision, which indicated that it has no office in New York, never qualified to do business here although it has performed millions of dollars of construction work in New York since 1988. However, it asserts that it has been paying our State franchise tax and has received authority from the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance to collect sales tax.

On August 28, 2001, Precision obtained a certificate from the Treasurer of the State of New Jersey stating that Precision has paid “in lieu of taxes and penalties, fees for reinstatement” and that it is authorized “to continue its business and resume the exercise of its functions.” Precision also obtained a letter from an employee of the New Jersey Department of the Treasury dated August 21, 2001 stating that the application for reinstatement was being forwarded to the “office of the Attorney General and the Secretary of State for final approval,” and that “when the formal certificate is approved reinstatement of a repealed charter relates back to the date of proclamation of repeal and validates corporate action in the interim.”

However, although this proceeding to discharge the lien was commenced in April, as of the oral argument on September 21 [530]*530Precision still had not obtained reinstatement of its New Jersey charter, nor obtained authority to do business in New York. A separate action was commenced by Precision in this court in 2000 to recover for the labor performed on a contract basis, which action is pending before Justice York.

The first issue to be resolved is Sales’ argument that the notice of lien should be discharged for failure to comply with the requirement of Lien Law § 9 (1) which mandates that the lienor state in the notice of lien “its principal place of business within the state.” Here Precision did not list a New York address, only specifying its place of business in Passaic, New Jersey.

In the treatise “Mechanics’ Liens in New York,” the author (Robert H. Bowmar) states, with respect to a foreign corporation,- that if “the corporation is found to be ‘doing business’ in New York, then it will have a ‘principal place of business’ here [and] a failure to describe such place in the notice will invalidate the lien” (§ 3.2 at 86-87). The only case cited in support of such proposition is John Roshirt, Inc. v Rosenstock (138 Misc 515 [Sup Ct, Albany County 1930]). In that case the foreign corporation stated that its principal office was in Cleveland, Ohio. However, since the proof showed that the corporation did have a place of business in New York, it was held that the lien was invalid for failure to comply with the foregoing statutory requirement. That decision was followed in J.C. Constr. Mgt. Corp. v Hunt Co. (266 AD2d 512, 513 [2d Dept 1999]), where it was ruled that where a foreign corporation had several places of business in the State, “its failure to recite the address of at least one of those locations on its notice of lien violates the Lien Law § 9 [1] and invalidates the lien.”

But where a foreign corporation was found not to be “doing business” in the State, it was ruled that there “being no principal place of business within the State, the recital of the principal place outside the State was a sufficient compliance with the provisions of the Lien Law” (Butts v Valerio Constr. Co., 236 App Div 299, 301-302 [3d Dept 1932], affd 261 NY 630 [1933]; accord Matter of Artcourt Realty Corp. v Garden State Brickface Co., 39 Misc 2d 796, 798 [Sup Ct, NY County 1963] [“Having concluded that lienor was not doing business in the State of New York within the meaning of the law, it follows that lienor cannot be said to have a principal place of business within the State”]).

On reargument of the decision in Artcourt Realty, the court discussed the Fourth Department decision in Matter of Rappoli [531]*531Co. v Cupples Prod. Corp. (5 AD2d 758 [1957]). There the Court stated that the facts were similar to that in Butts v Valerio Constr. Co. (supra), except that in the case before it the lienor had filed a certificate to do business in New York naming its office as that of the Corporation Trust Company. The Court denied discharge of the lien based on the finding that the lienor was not in fact doing business in New York, and ruled that “to hold that it nevertheless had a principal place of business at the office of the Corporation Trust Company, which was the address in the certificate, would be an attempt to breathe truth into a fiction” (Matter of Rappoli Co. v Cupples Prod. Corp., 5 AD2d 758). However, the Court went on to conclude that if at trial it was determined that the lienor was in fact doing business in New York, “the lien could then be dismissed and the matter continued as a common-law contract action” (id.).

Upon considering both Butts and Rappoli, the court upon re-argument in the case of Matter of Garden State Brickface Co. v Artcourt Realty Corp. (40 Misc 2d 712, 715) first upheld its prior determination that the lienor was not doing business in the State, but went on to state that even if it was doing business here the result would be the same because the Lien Law “does not require of a foreign corporation lienor the statement of a fictitious address or of an address that does not actually exist [and] [t]his is so whether such lienor has or has not previously filed a certificate of ‘doing business’.”

This latter dicta relates to the situation at bar where the lienor acknowledges that it is doing business here but without a New York office. In my view the result suggested in such dicta represents the appropriate determination. As noted above, there is no requirement that a corporation not considered as “doing business” here set forth a New York address in the notice of lien. Thus, there is no reason to require that a corporation engaging in such activities in New York so as to be deemed “doing business” here, but without a true New York place of business, set forth a New York address in the notice of lien, with the proviso that it name therein an attorney upon whom service may be made in New York with respect to the lien.

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Related

Butts v. Valerio Construction Company
185 N.E. 768 (New York Court of Appeals, 1933)
Warren Trading Corp. v. Kraglan Building Corp.
220 A.D. 3 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1927)
Miller v. Fitzpatrick
227 A.D. 745 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1929)
Butts v. Valerio Construction Co.
236 A.D. 299 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1932)
Italian Mosaic & Marble Co. v. City of Niagara Falls
131 Misc. 281 (New York Supreme Court, 1928)
The Dick Sand Co. v. State
137 Misc. 622 (New York Supreme Court, 1930)
John Roshirt, Inc. v. Rosenstock
138 Misc. 515 (New York Supreme Court, 1930)
Edmund J. Rappoli Co. v. Cupples Product Corp.
5 A.D.2d 758 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1957)
Tri-Terminal Corp. v. CITC Industries, Inc.
78 A.D.2d 609 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1980)
Lorisa Capital Corp. v. Gallo
119 A.D.2d 99 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1986)
De George v. Yusko
169 A.D.2d 865 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1991)
Schenectady Municipal Housing Authority v. Keystone Metals Corp.
245 A.D.2d 725 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1997)
McIntosh Builders, Inc. v. Ball
247 A.D.2d 103 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1998)
Scaffold-Russ Dilworth, Ltd. v. Shared Management Group, Ltd.
256 A.D.2d 1087 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1998)
People v. Murphy
258 A.D.2d 766 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1999)
J.C. Construction Management Corp. v. Robert Hunt Co.
266 A.D.2d 512 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1999)
Showcase Limousine, Inc. v. Carey
269 A.D.2d 133 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 2000)
Berkshire Engineering Corp. v. Scott-Paine
29 Misc. 2d 1010 (New York County Courts, 1961)
Artcourt Realty Corp. v. Garden State Brickface Co.
39 Misc. 2d 796 (New York Supreme Court, 1963)

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Bluebook (online)
189 Misc. 2d 528, 735 N.Y.S.2d 724, 2001 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 437, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/in-re-new-jersey-window-sales-inc-nysupct-2001.