54-55 St. Co. v. Torres

Full title: 54-55 STREET CO., Respondent, v. JOSE L. TORRES et al., Appellants

Court: Supreme Court, Appellate Term, First Department

Date published: Jan 17, 1997

171 Misc. 2d 237 (N.Y. App. Term 1997)

656 N.Y.S.2d 591

Opinion

January 17, 1997

APPEAL from an order of the Civil Court of the City of New York, New York County (Leona Freedman, J.), dated July 17, 1996, which, in a holdover summary proceeding, denied a motion by respondents to dismiss the petition and granted so much of a cross motion by petitioner as sought summary judgment of possession.

Jose L. Torres and others, appellants pro se, and Thomas Hoffman, New York City, for appellants.

Stempel Bennett Claman Hochberg, New York City (Richard L. Claman and Joelle B. Taub of counsel), for respondent.

Per Curiam.

Order dated July 17, 1996 affirmed, with $10 costs.

We reject, as did Civil Court, the jurisdictional argument raised by the commercial tenants in defense of this holdover proceeding. While the tenants in their moving papers below appropriately conceded the validity of the landlord's cure and termination notices (dated Apr. 4 and Apr. 15, 1996, respectively), tenants nonetheless argued that the landlord's initial March 25, 1996 notice of default was a "nullity" because signed by the landlord's managing agent, rather than a principal of the corporate landlord itself. The record establishes, however, that this same managing agent had billed tenants for rent over at least a three-month period before issuance of the March 25, 1996 notice of default, and no basis is shown for tenants to have doubted the managing agent's authority to bind the landlord. In these circumstances, the default notice was legally sufficient to advise the tenants of their lease violation (see, Melohn v. Guy, NYLJ, Mar. 21, 1989, at 21, col 2 [App Term, 1st Dept]; see also, Yui Woon Kwong v. Eng, 183 A.D.2d 558). The situation here is to be distinguished from that presented in Siegel v. Kentucky Fried Chicken ( 108 A.D.2d 218, affd 67 N.Y.2d 792), where an attorney unknown to the tenant had given default and termination notices without proof of authority.

Inasmuch as tenants have presented no cognizable substantive defense, summary judgment of possession was properly awarded to landlord on the holdover petition.

OSTRAU, P.J., McCOOE and FREEDMAN, JJ., concur.