Another Big Win in the Appellate Division!

Congratulations to our Senior Counsel, Steven G. Yudin, for another win in the Appellate Division. On May 18, 2023, the Appellate Division, First Department, unanimously affirmed a lower court’s ruling in our favor in Triad 11 East LLC v. Midoriya, Inc., Index No. 656077/2021, AD Case No. 2022-02861. Link to decision here.

Triad involved a retail tenant’s breach of its lease and the failure of the owner to honor his personal guaranty. The guarantor claimed he was excused from honoring the guaranty by virtue of a New York City pandemic-era law, NYC Administrative Code § 22-1005, which purports to suspend personal guarantor liability for a period of 17 months¹ for commercial leases of certain tenants whose operations were impacted by the Governor’s COVID-19 executive orders. However, we argued that the NYC law only covers businesses that served food for on-premises consumption and that this business was operating a grocery store/deli. The First Department upheld the ruling below that found that a grocery store/deli does not fall within the category of businesses covered by Administrative Code § 22-1005 or the Governor’s Executive orders.

¹The validity of the NYC guaranty law is presently in question, having been held unconstitutional by a recent ruling by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in Melendez v. City of New York, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 57050, Case No. 20-CV-5301(RA).