How Should I Prepare for my Housing Court Trial?

Prepare to SOAR:

S - Seek help.

O - Organize your documents.

A - Answer.

R - Research the Landlord

SEEK Help

Get in touch with your elected representative, or get on the Internet, and find a tenant clinic near your neighborhood.  Remember that often these clinics are run by tenant advocates who are not lawyers, but they can point you in the right direction or even refer you to skilled tenant attorneys.  Also, the housing courthouses of New York City have a pro se attorney's office.  A pro se attorney is a court attorney who will help you understand your court papers. 

Although these resources are helpful, you should understand they are not designed to give confidential legal advice.  Even attorneys in these settings are limited by the ethics rules as to how much legal advice they can provide. 

ORGANIZE your documents.

When I represent a tenant who is heading to trial, I can tell when things are going well; my back hurts.  It hurts because the case file in my shoulder bag gets thicker and thicker with the evidence I plan to present.  By the time of trial, I'm carrying a heavy box of indexed documents, cases and civil procedure books, and perhaps a blow-up or two.

Every trial is different, but if you have to prove, for example, that your primary residence is in the apartment, you want to present every piece of mail you ever received in the apartment, photographs of you in the apartment, documentation of college attendance or military service for time periods away from the apartment, tax docs, ATM transaction records, voter registrations . . . you get the picture.  You want to bury the landlord's case under a mountain of documents.

Get together the documents that you believe will support your case.  Keep them in one box and don't place anything else in it.  Separate your documents by category, and then place them in chronological order.  This should be done before you see a lawyer. And whatever you do, don't carry your documents in shopping bags! (All lawyers know the experience of meeting a client who brings shopping bags of disorganized documents.  If you carry your important papers like that, you should realize that you look a little crazy.)

ANSWER

In an eviction case, the landlord files a PETITION, which is the document that starts the case.  In response, the tenant files an ANSWER.  An answer is a document that responds to every paragraph of the landlord's petition, and provides the tenant's defense in regard to what happened. 

The petition and the answer are the first two documents the judge sees.  Often the judge makes his first assumptions about the case after reading these documents.  So your answer has to set forth a convincing blueprint of your case.

Included within the answer are the tenant's counterclaims.  Simply put, a counterclaim is a claim that the landlord owes the tenant money, usually because of rent overcharge.

Some defenses and counterclaims are "use it or lose it."  In other words, certain defenses that are not in the initial answer can never be raised later.  Therefore, it is important that your answer be thorough, accurate, and carefully made.  Consult a lawyer to find out which defenses and counterclaims should be in your answer.

Tenants should not only answer a petition, but should answer every motion while the case is pending - in writing.

RESEARCH the Landlord.

In housing court, knowledge is power.  Did you know that your landlord's case will be dismissed if he forgot to file his multiple dwelling registration?  Did you know that a landlord who substantially alters the building without obtaining a certificate of occupancy loses the right to take his tenants to court for the rent?  The devil is in the details.  As I always advise, make the following three stops:

Division of Housing and Community Renewal, 25 Beaver Street, Manhattan

For rent stabilized tenants only. Bring your lease or proof of address and get a rent history. This will indicate whether you are being illegally overcharged, and will reveal other juicy facts. A tenant being overcharged could possibly sue a landlord for thousands in damages.

Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), 100 Gold Street, Manhattan

Pay $8.00 and get a copy of your Multiple Dwelling Registration. This registration indicates who is the true owner of your building. A defective registration (or failure to register) will result in the dismissal of your landlord's eviction suit. While you are there, get a printout of all housing code violations, which will indicate any history of bad conditions in the apartment.

Department of Buildings, 280 Broadway, Manhattan

Bring proof of address and request a certificate of occupancy. If there is no certificate of occupancy for your building, find out why not. (The housing court dismisses all rent cases against tenants living in post-1925 buildings if the certificate of occupancy is missing.)

You will be surprised how much of a difference it makes when you prepare well for your housing court case. You will be facing experienced landlord attorneys when you get to court. But, all things being equal, preparation beats experience most of the time.