Citation Numbers： 243 A.D.2d 333, 663 N.Y.S.2d 171, 1997 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 10273
Filed Date： 10/21/1997
Status： Precedential
Modified Date： 11/1/2024
Order, Supreme Court, New York County (Walter Tolub, J.), entered June 25, 1996, which, in a mortgage foreclosure action, granted the receiver’s motion insofar as it sought a declaration that the garage and laundry leases between defendant cooperative, as landlord, and an affiliate of the sponsor, as tenant, were terminated on February 14, 1994, and denied the remainder of the receiver’s motion, including summary judgment on his claims for immediate possession of the garage and laundry facilities, damages and use and occupancy from February 14, 1994, unanimously affirmed, without costs.
We agree with the IAS Court that for purposes of ascertaining the commencement of the two-year period a cooperative has under Condominium and Cooperative Abuse Relief Act (15 USC) § 3607 to terminate “sweetheart” leases, the actual termination of the sponsor’s control over the cooperative is the governing event, not any assumed, purportedly automatic loss of voting control over the cooperative’s Board of Directors, under 13 NYCRR 18.3 (v) (5), no later than five years after the conversion. The IAS Court properly found that, although the sponsor here purported to relinquish its control over the cooperative’s Board on January 7, 1992, some six weeks after the five-year deadline, by appointing to the Board two residents of the building, it actually did not terminate its control until July 1992, when the shareholders first elected an independent