Nuisance cases: a trying issue.

Many people are familiar with the workings of Landlord-Tenant Court, along with its tendency to show a legally questionable bias toward tenants in cases of non-payment of rent. Though often linked, "non-payment" and "nuisance" are two distinct issues. When a tenant defaults on the rent and still maintains residence in the unit, it's usually only the landlord who suffers directly.

But when there is a tenant who causes an ongoing nuisance, many others suffer - the building's other tenants, the building itself, and even sometimes the block, the neighbors, and future renters. If it is hard to get a satisfactory hearing in a non-payment case, it is even more difficult even to get as far as a hearing or trial in nuisance cases. It is necessary to execute a series of exacting legal maneuvers before a judge will hear a nuisance case. And the problem person's behavior has to be so anti-social, threatening, even pathological, that "nuisance" would be too mild a term to describe it.

In order to file a complaint and notice of termination, the landlord has to document everything that the problem person has done, including offending activities, dates, and complaints filed with the police. The landlord is required by law to give the problem person notice that a case is being brought against him. In the case of violent, abusive, or procedurally so-phisticated tenants, it can be almost impossible to serve them with a summons.

Moreover, the landlord cannot accept any rent payment from the problem tenant once the termination notice is in effect; if rent is taken, the case can be voided, at which point it has to be started all over again. Finally and most frustratingly, if the problem tenant "behaves" after the notice has been served, there is a good chance that a "cure" can be claimed by the tenant and/or the tenant's attorney. Again, if this happens, the case may have to begin again. And, of course, the cure is almost invariably temporary - the bad behavior starts anew, and the paper chase starts again.

Howard Poch & Associates is currently handling a nuisance and non-payment case on behalf of a Brooklyn landlord who has had a problem tenant for over ten years. After reviewing the facts of this case, one can't help but wonder at the irony of it. Whom are the courts protecting? Should a long-time, deliberate, invasive, and notorious nuisance be shielded at the expense of the ordinary people the law was created to protect? Landlords and tenants alike may legitimately ask why they should foot the bill for this person's free rent while due process becomes overdue process.

In the present case, an individual had for ten years been behaving so anti-socially that he was way off the nuisance dial. His behavior was documented, in the manner described above, for the complaint notice to terminate tenancy. Fifteen months later, because of a number of tactics employed by the tenant, the case has only just made it to trial.

The complaints filed against this tenant are too numerous and spread over too long a time to repeat verbatim. But an overview of them should give a sense of the disturbance he caused. Repeated instances were documented of the tenant verbally assaulting the landlord, often using anti-semitic slurs. On at least one occasion, the tenant actually physically assaulted the landlord, hurling a mug at him. The complaint catalogues several instances of the tenant's refusing a plumber access to his apartment when a leak had occurred, even after the police intervened.

So far, these acts affect the landlord, impinging both on his physical and emotional well-being, and on the maintenance of his building. The complaints against this problem tenant, however, go much further, involving injury to other tenants in the building and ultimately to the building's reputation in the neighborhood.

Repeated instances of anti-homosexual slurs and verbal assault against at least one other long-term tenant of the building are documented, along with repeated instances of blasting the stereo and screaming in the hallways very late at night with the stated purpose of keeping everyone else in the building awake. Ultimately, this tenant waged such a persistent campaign of abuse and noise-making as to make the unit directly below his unrentable. Local real estate agents warn prospective tenants about the unit, and other tenants in the building, when questioned, urge any prospective tenant to look elsewhere.

Aren't you glad you don't live in this building? Or own it?

Currently on trial after several postponements, this case serves as a well-documented example of how the rules of today's housing court can result in a completely skewed set of circumstances, to the detriment of many innocent people and to the financial loss of an equally innocent landlord. While it seems to be on the extreme end of the spectrum, it typifies a disturbing trend whereby society and the courts protect an individual who is thought of as the underdog, but is in reality the person at whose mercy are all the other people in the equation. Perhaps this case's outcome will begin to turn the courts toward a more equal and just way of dealing with nuisances.