A Manhattan judge has barred a landlord from launching eviction proceedings against a Chelsea tenant because the tenant could unfairly be “blacklisted” by other landlords even if she wins her case.
The judge, state Supreme Court Justice Barbara Kapnick, said tenant Dawn Weisert could suffer “irreparable harm” if she’s sued in Housing Court because that court sells its eviction data to “tenant-screening bureaus” that, in turn, sell the information to landlords around the country.
Kapnick cited a recent ruling by a federal court judge who found that “risk-averse landlords are all too willing to use such ‘consumer reports’ as a ‘blacklist,’ refusing to rent to anyone whose name appears on it.”
The screening bureaus “have seized upon the ready and cheap availability of electronic records to create and market a product that can be, and probably is, used to victimize blameless individuals,” the ruling says.
Weisert’s lawyer, James Fishman, said tenants can be blacklisted even if they win. “They figure, why rent to somebody who beat their landlord in court,” he said.
But the attorney for Weisert’s landlord, a company called Subaqua, said it’s Kapnick’s decision that’s the threat.
“It turns the court system on its head,” Subaqua lawyer Jeffrey Goldman said. He predicted the ruling could sends tens of thousands of litigants flocking from what’s the busiest housing court in the country to the more expensive and slower moving state Supreme Court. He said his client is weighing an appeal.
Weisert is a 40-something artist who Fishman said is fighting to hold onto her rent-stabilized home of 20 years. The named tenant of the $580 apartment on West 17th Street was her “life partner” Raft Cooper who recently died.
Weisert notified the landlord of Cooper’s death, and filed the necessary paperwork to be named the successor to the apartment, Fishman said.
The landlord told her it planned to give her the boot, and having heard about the “blacklist,” Weisert filed suit in Manhattan Supreme Court to block Subaqua from trying to evict her, Fishman said.
Fishman said Kapnick’s ruling does allow the landlord to try to evict her in Supreme Court, which does not sell information to the screening bureaus.
Fishman said the state court system started selling the Housing Court info about 10 years ago, and sells the data to eight companies for less than $1 million a year.