Alvarado v. New York City Housing Authority,
NYLJ 7/14/2006 21:1 (Civ. Ct N.Y. County)

Mr. De Castro got a twenty-four year old man the right to move back into the city housing project apartment that he had lived in all his life until a few weeks after his mother’s death, when the housing project manager showed up unannounced at his door one night with two New York City policemen and threatened him and his brother with arrest unless they moved out of the apartment right then. The man left the apartment and lived on the streets, and with friends, for a few weeks but then contacted Mr. De Castro, who brought a proceeding in the housing court and persuaded the judge that the housing authority, in evicting him, had violated its own Management Manual procedures, first by not giving him an administrative hearing before evicting him, and, secondly, by denying him the right, which any New York tenant has, not to be evicted unless the landlord first goes to court and gets a judge to order the eviction. The judge ordered the housing authority to allow the man to return to live in the apartment, with a lease in his own name. And currently pending is a subsequent $1,000,000 law suit filed by Mr. De Castro against the New York Police Department for its role in the illegal eviction and for the emotional distress it inflicted on the young man.

Ludlow Properties v. Peter Young,
NYLJ 6/17/2004 18:1 (Civ. Ct N.Y. County),

In a housing court decision reported in both the New York Law Journal and the New York Daily News, Mr. De Castro won a forty-five per cent retroactive rent reduction for an East Village waiter whose studio apartment had been so infested with bedbugs that he had had to virtually empty his apartment of furniture, start sleeping on a metal cot, and decontaminate himself before visiting his family’s home at Christmas. Even though the landlord had had the apartment exterminated five times, Mr. De Castro won the abatement by showing in court that the landlord had nevertheless failed to exterminate the entire building, and so had allowed the bedbugs to merely migrate to other apartments for a while before returning to re-infest the waiter’s apartment. This case was the first New York City housing court case to deal with bedbugs since the early 1900s, but in the years since it was decided Mr. De Castro has successfully represented other tenants whose apartments were infested with bedbugs.

184 West 10th Street Corp. v. Marvits, NYLJ 6/8/2005 (Civ. Ct N.Y. County)

A 2005 case in which a woman, who had lived happily with her cats in her West Village apartment for thirty-one years, suddenly found herself facing eviction by a landlord who said she was violating a “no-pets” clause in her lease. Mr. De Castro successfully convinced the judge not to evict the woman by invoking a New York City Administrative Code provision that prevents landlords from enforcing a no-pets clause if a tenant has kept pets in her apartment “openly and notoriously” for at least three months. Although the landlord’s lawyers argued that the skittishness of the woman’s cats—they scurried under the furniture when visitors came—meant that they could not have been kept in her apartment openly or notoriously, Mr. De Castro got the court to agree with him that it was the woman’s behavior, not the cats’, that mattered, and that the woman, by keeping the cats litter box and food bowls in plain sight, had never done anything to hide from the landlord or his employees the cats’ presence in her apartment.

315-317 West 98th St. Co. v. Benedikt
9 Misc 3d 132(A), 2005 NY Slip Op 51615 (App Term, 1st Dept 2005),

Also published on www.nycourts.gov, a sixty-seven year old man who had lived in his Upper West Side apartment since 1967 faced eviction, in 2005, by a landlord who maintained that the man did not really live in the apartment but in a house he owned outside the city, even though the man had such serious medical problems that he almost never left his apartment. Mr. De Castro convinced the judge to issue an order denying the landlord’s attempt to evict the man, but the landlord subsequently made a further attempt to evict him, which was successful, by maintaining that he had not cooperated with clause in the judge’s order requiring him to give the landlord access to the apartment to make repairs. Mr. De Castro got that order by the judge stayed while he appealed it to the New York State Appellate Term, got the order reversed, and so won for the man the right to remain in his apartment.

R.E. Holding Co. v. New York Division of Housing and Community Renewal
2006 NY Slip Op 51658(U), 8/9/2006 (Sup Ct, N.Y. County)

Mr. De Castro won for a twenty-four year old woman the right to continue to live in, under a lease in her own name, the apartment she had lived in all her life with her mother, who was the original signer of the lease thirty years earlier but who moved out of the apartment in early 2005. The landlord had subsequently refused to give the daughter a lease of her own, even after the New York Division of Housing and Community Renewal ruled that the woman had succession rights to the apartment and ordered the landlord to give her a lease. Mr. De Castro got the New York State Supreme Court to order the landlord to accept the DHCR ruling and give the woman her own lease so she could continue to live in the apartment that had always been her home.

Tenants whose landlords charge them more than the legally allowable rent can recoup the extra money they pay, even after moving out of the apartment. In a 2006 case, Isabelle Lirakis v. 180 Seventh Avenue Associates, Mr. De Castro won $13,488 for a woman who had lived, at an illegally high rent, in an apartment for only one year. The woman actually overpaid only $4,496 during her year in the apartment, but Mr. De Castro convinced the judge that the landlord had imposed the overcharge willfully, not negligently, and that the woman consequently was legally entitled to three times the amount of money she had actually overpaid. Mr. De Castro also got the court to order the landlord to pay the attorneys fees incurred by the woman.

Hitchcock Plaza Inc. v. Willard
(2005 NYSlipOp 50943(U), 8/9/2006 (App. Term, First Department)

A couple who had lived in their Upper West Side apartment for fifteen years faced eviction, in 2005, by their landlord, who maintained that they had substantially violated the terms of their lease just because they had been late paying the rent several times over the years. Mr. De Castro successfully defended the couple, getting the court to deny the landlord’s attempted eviction of them, but then the landlord appealed the case. Mr. De Castro was the couple’s attorney for the appeal as well, and again convinced the court to allow the couple to prevail.