Montera v. KMR Amsterdam LLC, 193 A.D.3d 102 (2021)

Citation: Montera v. KMR Amsterdam LLC, 193 A.D.3d 102 (2021)
Parent Document: Montera v. KMR Amsterdam LLC, 193 A.D.3d 102 (2021)
Jurisdiction: New York (state)
Effective Date: 2021-02-09
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4855109/montera-v-kmr-amsterdam-llc/ ↗

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Roberts rent overcharge claims are based upon a landlord having removed an apartment from rent stabilization through luxury decontrol, while at the same time receiving J-51 tax benefits. DHCR guidance originally permitted deregulation under these circumstances. In Roberts, however, the Court of Appeals rejected the agency's position, holding instead that as long at the J-51 benefit was in place, the landlord was precluded from removing the apartment from rent stabilization. Roberts was followed by years of litigation about how to resolve such overcharge claims. In Regina the Court of Appeals acknowledged the "understandable confusion" about how Roberts should be implemented (Regina at 357) and set forth an analytical framework by which to resolve many of the open questions. The Court has clarified that in Roberts cases, review of an apartment's rent history outside the four-year lookback period is permitted only where the tenant can prove a common-law fraud, that is a fraudulent scheme to deregulate the apartment, and then only to prove the scheme, not to furnish evidence for calculation of the base date rent (Regina at 355). At bar, defendant met its prima facie burden of showing that, at its core, plaintiff is asserting a Roberts overcharge claim. The rent that defendant actually charged four years prior to plaintiff's filing of this complaint is, therefore, the base date rent for purposes of calculating plaintiff's overcharge claim. In opposition, plaintiff has not presented any indicia of fraud that would permit review of the apartment's rent history before the lookback period, let alone opening this case to broad discovery on whether any such fraud occurred.

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