Premiere Legal Win: One for the Books

I set foot in the United States of America three years ago as a student and within ten days I signed the lease for a room in an apartment at 296 Columbia St, Brooklyn, NY 11201; this was going to be my home away from home for the next twenty-four months that I pursued a Master of Science at New York University.

The lease agreement drafted by the landlord was a standard one favoring and protecting the rights of the landlord and the landlord was well aware of the fact that I am in the US on a non-immigrant student visa and they even vetted the bank statements of my parents. The apartment had two bedrooms, one occupied by the daughter of the landlord and the other by me. Over the course of time, both the landlord and the daughter of the landlord would try to corner me and try to get money out of me for repairs, utilities (utilities were included in my rent), etc.

Things went south when I discovered one day that the apartment is rent-stabilized and that landlords are not supposed to overcharge tenants in a rent-stabilized tenancy. From this point forward I started to question everything that the landlord told me. Upon completion of the tenure of my lease, I sent a legal notice over to the landlord which they denied with threats to sue me instead for things I haven't done. I then started gathering facts and researching case law and reading judgments of similar past cases in city courts and appellate courts. Thankfully, my learnings from the Intellectual Property Law class, a mandatory subject for me, at NYU Tandon School of Engineering came in handy.

At this juncture, my parents, along with my aunt and uncle who are lawyers in India, were against me to pursue legal recourse against the landlord. Understandably enough their concerns were genuine as I am an alien in this country with no support and connection with an attorney or any person with a definitive and comprehensive knowledge of US laws and underlying procedures. However, I made a conscious choice to sue the landlord because it wasn't about the money anymore - it was about standing up for what is right and if I didn't stand up for myself, then no one else would.

On September 21, 2020, I finally sued my landlord, as a Pro-se (self-represented or without an attorney) Plaintiff, in the Civil Court of the City of New York for the Kings County of New York (Case Index Number: CV-015436-20/KI) on account of the following three counts:

1. Violation of the New York City Rent Stabilization Law of 1969 [RSL § 26-511 (12)] and the Rent Stabilization Code [9 NYCRR § 2525.7]
2. Violation of the Warranty of Habitability of the New York Real Property Law [RPP § 235-B]
3. Violation of the Lease Agreement

The landlord or the Defendant in the case were served the Summons with Complaint and the wheels of justice had just begun to grind. The Defendant did answer the Court but chose to keep me out of the loop. While all of this was happening, the Governor of the State of New York issued Executive Order 202.8 temporarily limiting Court operations and tolling time limits due to the ongoing COVID-19 disaster emergency. This meant that the Defendant need not follow the time limits as set under the law till the Executive Order was in effect or the same was amended. This was a welcome move for people facing hardships due to the pandemic but it also delayed justice from being served.

Nonetheless, I did not let this deter me and I went on with dotting the i's and crossing the t's. Meanwhile, one of my friends at NYU, also an international student, contacted me to discuss how their landlord was harassing them and had denied to return their security deposit and instead was asking for an additional hefty amount of money.

Eventually, after months of waiting,?I was ordered to appear virtually for a pre-trial conference on August 16, 2021. Fast forward to November 10, 2021, I got my day in Court for the trial and I remember not closing my eyes for even a single second the preceding night. I made sure that my presentation of the case was solely based on the facts and left no room for conjecture of any kind. The Defendant began with pleading not guilty but given the examination of facts and documents along with questioning from the Judge and me, by the end of the trial, they pleaded no contest on account of not knowing the law.

Luckily or not, the Judge, Honorable Ellen E. Edwards, entered a judgment in my favor and against the Defendant and awarded the amount I had lost with interest and the Court fees. It might be safe to say that I ran the opposition to the ground!

One mistake that I must accept is that I did not put a quantitative dollar figure to charge the Defendant for mental damages. In addition to the amount I lost, my Complaint read that, "I should be awarded such other and further relief as may be lawful for the offenses complained of herein, or that the Court deems just and proper." This saved the Defendant from receiving a penalty amount which could run up to three times the principal amount that I had lost.

But in conclusion, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere", as rightly said by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Maybe, if I didn't stand up for what was right, the landlord might have continued overcharging and harassing others like me, especially international students. Profiteering landlords must note that all it takes to set the record straight is one human with courage and conscience.

Satyameva Jayate! (Truth alone triumphs)