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).