A Tale of Two Cities: The Residential Landlord’s Duty to Mitigate in New York

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development, Vol. 25, 2011

St. John's Legal Studies Research Paper No. 10-195

24 Pages Posted: 9 Oct 2010 Last revised: 9 Oct 2013

See all articles by Jeremy N. Sheff

Jeremy N. Sheff

St. John's University School of Law

Date Written: October 8, 2010

Abstract

The 2008 decision of the New York Supreme Court's Appellate Division for the Second Department in Rios v. Carrillo brought stability to a previously uncertain area of landlord-tenant law: the duty of residential landlords to attempt to mitigate damages in the event of tenant abandonment. This article argues that in the instability that largely reigned prior to Rios, courts used the debate over what legal rule to apply in tenant abandonment cases as a tool to decide such cases based on flexible equitable standards that took into account the relative economic position of the parties and their degree of good faith. Because the New York court system accords weight to appellate precedent in part based on amount in controversy, and because Rios involved what can only be described as a luxury property, the Second Department's ruling has the perverse effect of subjecting economically insecure parties to solutions developed for far wealthier litigants. This article demonstrates the extent of this effect by reference to census data on households and housing markets, and argues that Rios was wrongly decided not only as a matter of legal analysis, but as a matter of policy.

Suggested Citation

Sheff, Jeremy N., A Tale of Two Cities: The Residential Landlord’s Duty to Mitigate in New York (October 8, 2010). Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development, Vol. 25, 2011, St. John's Legal Studies Research Paper No. 10-195, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1689684

Jeremy N. Sheff (Contact Author)

St. John's University School of Law ( email )

8000 Utopia Parkway
Jamaica, NY 11439
United States
718-990-5504 (Phone)

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
158
Abstract Views
1,516
Rank
338,002
PlumX Metrics