How it feels… to be a lawyer for the tenant in an ugly landlord-tenant battle
Samuel Himmelstein, partner at Himmelstein, McConnell, Gribben, Donoghue & Joseph.
As told to Lauren Elkies
What makes my side of the business hard is that for the landlord it’s a business, but for the tenant it’s a home, and it’s generally one they have lived in for a long time. They’re tied to their home, to their neighbors and to the neighborhood, and they feel almost a sense of entitlement about staying in their apartment. That part of it can be gut-wrenching.
The longest trial I ever did was an owner-use case where the owner said he wanted to live in four apartments in an eight-unit building on 57th Street between Ninth and 10th avenues. The trial went on for more than a week, which is fairly long among these kinds of cases.
The judge found in favor of the tenants, so the landlord had to pay all of my legal fees, which amounted to around $50,000, and the tenants got to stay in their apartments.
There was nothing credible about the landlord’s case, and the court didn’t believe he actually wanted to live in the apartments. He owns about 43 buildings throughout the city and uses this as a way to evict tenants he doesn’t like.
During the trial, when I was cross-examining him, he asked why I “had it in for him.” I have managed to be victorious over him before and after, and he does not like me.
The longest and most bitter case I have worked on is the Sheffield case. The Sheffield is an 800-plus-unit rental building at 322 West 57th Street, where the vast majority of the tenants are market-rate tenants.
The sponsor, Kent Swig [president of Swig Equities], filed a plan to convert the Sheffield to condominium ownership.
We were retained by a group of twenty-some tenants when he started eviction proceedings in March 2006.
The tenants asked us to come up with a theory to retain their tenancy. We had a mammoth court battle over this. The litigation got very nasty, since there was a lot at stake for this building and the real estate industry as a whole.
The first judge’s decision said we were not protected. In the second decision, dated March 2007, the judge ruled our clients could not be evicted. [As of late October, the case was on appeal.] This was a fairly momentous decision because it offered protection from eviction to an entire new class of tenants in New York.
I happened to be in court on other cases that day, and we got word that the judge wanted to see us in his courtroom. He handed me an envelope with the decision. I went right to the last page, because it tells you if the judge gave you what you want.
I would have liked to jump about 10 feet into the air, but because I was standing next to my adversary, I just said, “We won.” I offered him my condolences, he congratulated me and then I went around the corner and pumped my fist and said, “Yes!”
[Swig responded by saying that the second decision was wrong and contradicted the law. “In effect, the decision granted a squatter or trespasser the right to continue to occupy property owned by another party without a lease,” he said. “We immediately filed an appeal of this decision, and we
expect to prevail.”]
How it feels… to be a lawyer for the landlord in an ugly landlord-tenant battle
Jamie Heiberger-Jacobsen, president and founder of Heiberger & Associates.
As told to Lauren Elkies
My role is solely that of an attorney for the owner or management company. As such, tenants oftentimes displace their feelings and anger at us because we’re the ones dealing with them in the court setting. Recently, a tenant was screaming that they didn’t owe money and grabbed the paperwork out of my attorney’s hands. The court officer escorted them out of the courthouse.
Cases with a claim of illegal activity [such as gambling, prostitution or drug dealing] are almost always started under the direction of the district attorney’s office. Because of that, these cases are surprisingly less hostile, because we aren’t the ones initiating action.
Nuisance cases, on the other hand, where the tenant is causing problems in the building — from verbal and physical abuse to graffiti to noise — those are cases where you might get hostility because often the landlord is looking to have them vacate the building.
Generally speaking, cases get resolved without the need for a trial. Most of the tenants do settle, but I’ve had some cases that drag through the court system for years.
About 10 years ago, I had a jury trial with a rent-controlled tenant who had been in court with my client for years even prior to my representing them. The trial lasted about six weeks. Since then, we are in court with the same individual about every two or three years, but the nature of the interaction has significantly mellowed out — although the tenant still gets really confrontational with us.
Oftentimes, a nonpayment case is brought against the same tenant time and time again over a long period of time, like 10 years.
It may have started as a hostile or contentious relationship, but the tenant’s anger toward “us” as advocates for the owner often dissipates.
In cases where we send out a notice to terminate tenancy on behalf of the owner, although they don’t have to send any paperwork back, sometimes tenants will send a note back berating us.
We had someone send us a box full of human hair this summer. The box was open, and you could see it was hair with white stuff in it, like dandruff. I don’t know what it meant. I just wanted it out of my office. That is one of the stranger things that has happened.
I always make it very clear when hiring a new attorney: If you want to work in this business, you really can’t take anything personally, nor can you work in this industry on the owner’s side if you’re going to feel sorry for the tenant, because then you cannot properly represent the client.
Owners have a responsibility to maintain their buildings, but if somebody owes rent, you should bring a case against them. We all have to pay bills. If I don’t pay Con Ed, I’m not going to have electricity. If I don’t pay my phone bill, I won’t have phone service.
I have never had a problem sleeping at night because of what I do; it’s a business, and I believe in my position.