New York Law Journal | Tenants Beware: Your Cure Period May Not Be as Long as You Think

Tenants often successfully use a landlord’s failure to comply with notice requirements of a lease to seek dismissal of summary proceedings. See Parkchester Apts. Co. v. Walker, 1995 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 738, at *2 (Civ. Ct. Bronx City. 1995) (dismissing non-payment petition because landlord failed to prove that proper predicate notice had been served, which the court held was a jurisdictional prerequisite to a non-payment petition). It is important for tenants to know, however, that, depending on the language of their lease, they may not be able to rely on the notice period provided in conditional limitation provisions as a defense in a non-payment proceeding. This is true even if the only notice provision contained in the entire lease is that found in the conditional limitation provision. Rather, a landlord can elect not to enforce a conditional limitation related to non-payment of rent and instead, commence a nonpayment proceeding upon only the three-day notice required by New York’s Real Property Actions and Proceedings Laws (RPAPL), leaving tenants a shorter window to respond to landlord’s claims.