EP07 S02: How Can I Complain About My Landlord?
Today we discuss landlord responsibility and what you can do if you want to complain about him/her. Click Listen to our Podcast episode or read our full transcript here below.
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Full Transcript:
Welcome to Trial Stories an informative discussion of civil justice with a focus on the human story. I’m your host. Arkady Frekhtman a New York City trial lawyer passionate about helping serious injury victims and their families.
New York City tenants often ask, “How can I report my landlord for negligence?” Well, there are a few ways. Number one is if the landlord isn’t responding to your emails, to your verbal complaints, if they’re just not responsive and the issues, the safety violations, the hazards in the building just continue to accrue and happen and they’re not being resolved. One of the things you can do is simply call 311.
The city of New York has a system where you can make a complaint and it’ll be documented and it’ll be filed with the New York City Department of Buildings if it qualifies for that. There are certain rules. Or, if not the Department of Buildings, then it’ll be the New York City Department of Housing and Preservation, and then they send someone out to inspect and to make sure that this particular complaint has been remedied. If it hasn’t been remedied, then they issue a violation as well as a fine to the landlord. Usually, landlords are pretty responsive with this, because they don’t want to get the fine. They don’t want to have to go to court or be hit with these sanctions of fines and violations. But that’s one of the ways to complain.
Another way is if somebody does slip and fall or get injured or gets hit with a ceiling collapse or something like that, well then they can contact an attorney, and then they would file a lawsuit against the landlord, which would be a complaint not just against the landlord, but also to the insurance carrier for the entire building to attempt to receive compensation for the value of all the losses that someone suffered. Because someone may be out of work and have lost wages. Somebody may have to incur medical bills because of the injury. Someone may just have pain and suffering.
The law says that that is allowable, that a jury could allow an amount of money, general damages, for the pain and suffering to fix, help and make up for all of the sufferings, the anxiety, the pain, the surgery, whatever the injury that happened, whatever the injury may be. That’s one of the ways that tenants can fight back against landlords that are not safe.
Okay. I hope this has been helpful. Please drop us a comment, subscribe to our podcast, let us know what other topics you’d like to hear about. We have a lot of trial stories from all types of cases, construction, work accidents, slip and falls, premises, ceiling collapses. We have brain injuries. We have spinal cord injuries. Medical cases with medical mistakes. All types of cases. So whatever you’re most interested in is what we’re going to talk about.
Have a great day, everyone. Bye-bye.
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