Why not? They get someone else on the hook for the rent and tenancy obligations and it’s not like if they get rid of the prime tenant they can drastically increase the rent if it is a rent stabilized apartment. They’d either have to spend $$$ litigating the successor’s claim or time and $$ finding a new tenant who would be sbj to the same RGB increases anyway.

Again, it would not matter if the LL rejected the request to add the relative because it is the successor’s burden to prove they asked. If they cannot meet that extremely low bar, set by statute, then maybe they are the ones full of shit.

Succession claims are the tenant’s burden to prove precisely because the landlord would not have enough information to know whether the relative has stayed with the tenant long enough to be entitled to succeed. Even if the tenant has a valid claim, they apparently never sought to be named as a co-tenant on the lease, despite claiming to have lived there for 2 years.

Sure, and all this is why I left L&T practice, but then legal aid still doesn’t have a leg to stand on to complain that they are overworked and underpaid when they could prioritize those cases where real defenses exist on the facts, against actual slumlords who are breaking the law.

They are incentivized to take this tact as to all cases, however, as they are in a position that benefits uniquely from delay since it allows their client to remain in possession without paying legal fees and often without paying rent.

When LL attnys delay it prejudices their clients who are actually paying legal fees, such that the cost of litigation is weighed against the benefit of proceeding with a frivolous case.

Ultimately, and this is what I would always discuss with the legal aid attorneys outside of court, the system benefits the attorneys on both sides. Legal aid just likes to take a bit more umbrage, in my experience.

Maybe I didn’t my understand why you brought up overcharge claims then, because I’m not saying they can never seek legal fees, but that they don’t do their due diligence on whether they would actually be able to recover legal fees under the RPL before stating a claim.

It is just another delay tactic - they don’t have to reserve their right to seek it to be able to recover at or even after trial, the individual attorney won’t benefit from it, as you point out, and they agency doesn’t usually consider it worth their time to pursue unless it’s a very involved case, since they just get paid from the municipality and will never go under like a private firm would.

Overcharge can entitle a tenant to recovery of treble damages, but whether and to what extent a tenant’s attorney would be entitled to a cut of those enhanced damages would depend on the retainer agreement. Also, legal fees, late fees, etc. are not technically part of the rent overcharge calculation and should be severed to a plenary action.

Even if a tenant files a pro se answer, once they get an attorney, the attorney can move for leave to file an amended answer, saying that the tenant did not know all their rights at the time they filed pro se. They have to attach the proposed amended answer to that motion, but once the motion is granted they can “forget” to then file that answer until the eve of trial.

You’d also be surprised how many people aren’t willing to stand on line half a day to file that initial answer when they know they can show up after a default is entered against them and do a stip or get a 1st adjournment to seek counsel.

My firm represented non-for profit landlords, we drafted our own petitions and did not seek legal fees, the leases we drafted never had legal fee clauses, and so the reciprocal fee provision under RPL 234 never was actionable. But that’s just my point they don’t look at the papers and just use their form motions, throwing in everything under the sun.

Most of the time legal aid would make pre-answer dismissal motions, (dismissal after an answer is treated as summary judgment, which is a higher burden). Even if they agreed in multiple stips to submit answers by a date certain, they would resist filing an answer (even just a general denial) literally until the judge transfers the case to the trial part to preserve their right to a pre-answer dismissal.

If the tenant has asserted a counter-claim it’s not dismissal as of right, but an overworked legal aid attorney would just stip to discontinue without prejudice to any remaining balance and reserve their right to claim repairs in the future and advise the tenant to call 311. Better than keeping the possessory judgment alive on the off chance tenant misses a payment by the next court appearance. In an HP case for repairs started by the tenant, sure, the LL can’t discontinue, but it’s because the tenant is the plaintiff.

Legal aid’s impetus is just to draw out the case so their client remains in possession for longer. Then they complain about how many cases are clogging the docket as if they have no control over the situation.

I worked opposite these guys for years. They tried to engage in some collective bargaining a few years ago but what they can squeeze out from the city is never going to be enough for the work load.

Tenancy rights are only getting more complicated, so it’s really not the kind of job you can hire right out of law school for, except those are the only applicants legal aid can afford to hire.

Their main tact is to bury LL attnys in paperwork - they shared work product, always throw in legal fee claims for themselves, frivolous dismissal motions for lack of subject matter jurisdiction (in housing court!) - but it backfired because LL attnys can just drop the case without prejudice, started hiring law school graduates just to respond to papers for half the salary of legal aid, etc.