*262In any case, having obtained a ruling that action No. 2 was retaliatory, the tenant did not then demand damages (perhaps because, as indicated by the trial court, she was not then prepared to "document her claimed losses”, or perhaps because her damages were not then large enough to bother with), but instead caused the judgment of May 19, 1986 to be entered. It was not until two years later, after the landlord was held in contempt of the injunctive provisions of that judgment, that the tenant sought leave to amend her pleadings to demand damages. This contempt order (for which the tenant’s attorneys were also compensated) is claimed by the tenant to be a concurrent source of her substantive right to damages; however, "fi]n part because of the complex technicalities involved in an application [for damages under] Judiciary Law Section 773”, she prefers instead to base her claim for damages on Real Property Law § 223-b and "common law principles”. The choice, of course, was the tenant’s to make, but, having made it, the question of whether the fine imposed by the trial court was properly limited to $250 becomes academic, since, if damages are to be awarded, they must, by reason of that choice, be attributed to the retaliatory eviction and not the contempt. But, as noted, because damages for retaliatory eviction had not been demanded as of the time the May 19, 1986 judgment was entered, the finding of retaliatory eviction was superfluous for purposes of that judgment, and indeed was without any apparent consequence whatsoever save insofar as it might be given res judicata effect in another action. Such considerations might well have influenced the tenor of the argument on the prior appeal, and make it appropriate to hold the tenant to what was apparently her original strategy of saving her damages claim for another action, as permitted by the permissive counterclaim rule. And, if it was not an abuse of discretion for the trial court to relegate the tenant to another action for the damages she seeks in connection with a retaliatory eviction embraced within the pleadings, it certainly was not an abuse of discretion for it to so relegate her for the damages she seeks in connection with a later retaliatory eviction not embraced within the pleadings.