Chinatown Preserv. HDFC v Yu Hua Chen, 2010 NY Slip Op 50730(U) [27 Misc 3d 1213(A)]

violation. These are issues for trial. Respondents do not demonstrate that judgment as a matter of
law is warranted, and do not cite any law, but instead raise issues of fact. Respondents'
summary-judgment motions are denied.

V. Respondents' Motions to Amend Answers to Include Jury Demands and Fifth
Counterclaim.

Respondents also move for leave to file a second amended answer to include a jury demand
and allegations that petitioner had commenced and discontinued a prior holdover petition in
April 2009 that injured the respondents.

Respondents' petitions to amend their answers and include a jury demand is denied because
respondents failed to include a jury demand in their answers and accordingly waived the right to
a jury trial under New York City Civil Court Act § 1303. Respondents' claim that there was
"continuing litigation" when respondents filed their answers does not excuse their failure to
assert a timely jury demand.

Jury-waiver provisions in a lease are valid. (See Waterside Holding Corp. v Lask,
233 AD 456, 457 [1st Dept 1931].) Respondents offer an unconvincing argument that because
they do not speak English, they could not intelligently waive their rights to a jury. When
respondents signed they lease, they bound themselves to its terms, and "[n]ot to have read the
contract or to have had it read to [them] before signing, if that be a fact as [they] testified,
furnishes no basis for [their] [*10]repudiation of any of its
terms." (James Talcott, Inc. v Wilson Hosiery Co., 32 AD2d 524, 525 [1st Dept 1969].)
Respondent also argued that 24 CFR 966.6 (f) precludes a jury-waiver clause in the lease
because petitioner is a "nonprofit whose purchase of subject building was completed exclusively