Monthly Archives: August 2019

The [Rhas] Have It

This was originally published on the SGR Blog.

Heung C. Rha and Suhn O. Rha agreed to purchase the property located at 16-17 Bell Blvd., Bayside, New York from Alessio Blangiardo  pursuant to a contract signed on October 23, 2014.

The Rhas obligations under the contract were conditioned upon their receipt of a written mortgage loan commitment on or before November 30, 2014. And the Rhas tendered a $110,000.00 down payment, which was deposited into nonparty Salvatore E. Strazzullo, Esq.’s escrow account.

The contract included an Internal Revenue Code Section 1031 Exchange Addendum in which the parties acknowledged that the Rhas intended to purchase the property as part of a tax deferred exchange.

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New York Court of Appeals Update (August 2019)

We recently published this on the SGR Blog.

The end of June often sees “blockbuster” decisions by the Court of Appeals before the Summer recess. But the 2018/2019 Term ended “not with a bang but a whimper.” Decisions dealt with important but mundane matters: whether or not a coke oven was a product or a service for strict liability purposes; whether buildings in Lower Manhattan that received certain tax benefits were subject to luxury rent deregulation; and whether an earlier and undocketed judgment of divorce was superior to a later and docketed judgement based on an arbitration award.

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Don’t Mess With a Senior Citizen/Tenant (Whose Son is an Attorney)

This was originally published on the SGR Blog.

Phyllis Kossoff, a 92-year-old woman, lived in an apartment at 910 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan since 1966. After the building was converted into a coop, Kossoff and her husband became proprietary lessees of their unit. A recent dispute arose about whether Kossoff or the coop was responsible for replacing and paying for the replacement of the balcony windows and sills of the unit.

On March 22, 2018 Kossoff was approached by the coop and asked whether she was interested in selling her apartment to another shareholder who lived on her floor. Kossoff said she was not interested in selling her home of over 50 years.

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Rooftop (Legal) Warfare on Washington Avenue

This was originally published on the SGR Blog.

A recent lawsuit resulted from an ongoing quarrel, between neighbors in a Washington Avenue co-op apartment building, over who owned a 2-foot by 20-foot strip of a shared rooftop terrace.

Justin Theroux (Apt. 2B) filed a complaint against Norman J. Resnicow and Barbara Resnicow, his downstairs neighbors (Apt.1A), for allegedly depriving Theroux of his right to enjoy his property.

Theroux contended that the Resnicows had engaged in a malicious and years-long harassment campaign that included frivolously challenging the boundary line between Theroux’s and the Resnicows’ shared roof deck.

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