Catching up with the Court Cases: The Decision in the HP Case and Where it Went From There.

 Well, the victory in the Illegal lockout case was very heartening, but it was not the end. It was not even the beginning of the end. It may have been past the end of the beginning, but I don't think it is quite the middle yet.

While the Illegal Lockout case was still being tried, Judge Weisberg released his decision in the HP case (I will post it here when I get it loaded to YouTube). It was brief, and said that because my vacated room is an illegal Single Room Occupancy dwelling, he could not order it to be re-occupied, so it would be futile to order the safety condition (lack of a fire escape or other means of egress) repaired, so the entire case, including the building violations and harassment, was dismissed (without prejudice, so I could seek relief elsewhere, just not in housing court) However, my neighbor's case, which involved the same building violations and harassment complaints, was moved to another part of housing Court for trial under one Judge Capell..

I felt this ruling to be not quite right. How could one person's harassment complaint be worthy of consideration in housing court but another's is  not when both cases involved the same actions of the same building manager in the same building to tenants of that building? Also, there had been no consideration made of the possibility that the illegal room could become part of a larger, legal apartment if combined with other rooms? Would a rent-stabilized tenant have the right to move into that new apartment that contains his old room?

So I filed what is known as a Motion to Reconsider. Unlike an appeal, which goes to a higher court and requires copies of the transcript and every document filed in the original court in quadruplicate, and Motion to Reconsider merely requires an affidavit (Extra exhibits for evidence is a plus).

Before I was ready to file that Motion, though, Judge Capell held her first conference in the matter of my neighbor's case against the management and owners of 182 Graham Avenue.

Because she was actually a co-petitioner of mine in the HP action, the papers that came through setting the date and time of this conference had my name as the petitioner of this case. I thought this meant that only the "repair and return" position of my case was dismissed and the building violations and harassment were still in play after all. But when we logged on and dialed in to the Teams meeting that is what "being in court" means these days, we were informed that no, my entire case WAS dismissed after all. I was, however, allowed to be an observer of the case, "in the audience" if you will.

The defense attorney, Charles Marino, of course, led with a bunch of creative interpretations of the history of the case and the building. He repeatedly said "rent controlled" when the accurate term would have been "rent stabilized. He talked about the difficult position the owners were in due to all the violations and that the tenants had "chopped up" the apartments to make SROs. And then he got to the point where he said that they had to make each floor one apartment to conform to the Certificate of Occupancy and that meant they would have to evict all but one of the tenants from each floor.. That's when I couldn't hold it in anymore and raised my hand.

Judge Capell pointed out that there were two tenants present, myself and my neighbor , and asked what our thought were on the matter of each floor being one apartment. We both stated that we did not object in principle to being co-tenants of one apartment.

Since I had lived in the building for 27 years and Marino had obviously never set foot in the building. Judge Capell allowed me to answer questions and speak in regard to the history and condition of the building. I pointed out that where Marino said "controlled" he should have said "stabilized" (which Judge Capell noted changed things), that there were plenty of empty rooms int he building and that it is possible that all the vacated tenants could be moved into them.

There was a little back-and-forth between myself, Judge Capell, Marino, and my neighbor. Being very conscious of my non-participant status in this trial, I was on ,my best behavior and made sure to raise my hand and only speak when invited to.

In the end, Judge Capell said that the tenants and the owners and management should get together and figure out a way for all the tenants, vacated an d otherwise, to like in a safe, legal building, and once that is done, she would hear and try the harassment complaints. And every month that was not the case, civil penalties would be assessed against the owners.

She also complimented me on being so well behaved and respectful.

So the judge adjourned the case for a month in the hopes that when we returned, we would have a deal.

It didn't quite happen that way.

NEXT: Decision! Reconsideration! Contempt!

January 6, 2021, Part 1

 Just a reminder: On January 6th of this year, a joint session of Congress was convened to count the certified votes from all 50 states for the office of President of the United States of America.

On the same day, a rally was organized to protest the results of that vote, claiming that the results were false, tainted by voter fraud.

After firey speeches by a congressman in a wheelchair, a guy who tried to claim that there were more votes than voters in one state by listing towns in a different state and that he had hacked into a Dominion voting device that was not connected to the Internet, and Rudolph Giuliani (who said, among other things, "let's have trial by combat!"), president Donald Trump claimed the election was "rigged...like they've never rigged an election before") urged his supporters to fight. "We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."

He said he would be with them as he urged them to march on the Capitol Building and somehow convince the vice president, Mike Pence, to change the results of the election. He was not.

Thousands of people left the spot of the rally and walked, en mass, down the road to the Capitol Building, where there were already groups of people from organizations like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers pressing at the barriers, in some cases actually rushing the barriers and pushing past police who, somehow, were not expecting and not prepared for this.

The Capitol Building is huge, with many entrances. at some, for some reason, the police whose job it is to protect the people inside the building let protesters walk in, at others, however, they shut the doors and held them back as long as they could.

As the crowd around the Capitol Building got bigger and bigger, blows were thrown. The metal barricades that will only stop people who are polite enough to not jump over them or move them aside were jumped over and moved aside. Police retreated in stages. When the crowds got too big at one point, they retreated to others.

Some among the crowd tried to discourage destruction of property, smashing of windows, etc. But some actively reveled in the destruction of property and smashing of windows. Soon crowds were streaming through windows and doors that had been broken through.

All this time, certain Republicans were contesting the counting of votes. A call was made for a commission, liek the one in 1878, to investigate the election, voter fraud, etc, supposedly to find out who really won the election, as if 50 states' certificated results, three score court cases with four score judges, could possibly be wrong.

And then they stopped.

Reading the decision of the New Illegal Lockout Case

 Here is the decision by the Honorable Judge Jack Stoller in my second Illegal Lockout case (the one about the front door of 182 Graham Avenue,. Brooklyn, NY)