- Tenant's Violation of Town / Village Code: Noise violations, occupancy limits and parking issues can cause a landlord to find himself in Town or Village Court facing a citation but through no fault of his own. All it takes is an annoyed neighbor's complaint and the Code Enforcement will be knocking on the door to the landlord's rental property. Moreover, a tenant has legal authority to invite Code Enforcement officials into the dwelling where they can find more structural violations of the Code at the property. Not only will this result in a waste of the landlord's time and money (i.e. fines), but the landlord lacks the requisite control to remedy the situation, which is often required by the prosecuting attorneys in order to make a plea bargain. So, a landlord will be left with the only option of pursuing an eviction proceeding against the tenant. Hopefully the landlord had a lease that provided that compliance with local laws was a substantial aspect of the tenancy. Better yet, savvy landlords will include a liquidated damages provision in their lease (i.e. predetermined monetary damages agreement) to adequately compensate the landlords for their time and costs in appearing in Town/Village Court, including attorneys' fees, fines and the like.
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So, our court system addresses the thing that must happen second first and the thing that must happen first second. Predicate Notices, required if a term of a lease is violated and there is a cure provision in the lease, are used when there is a non-payment and when a landlord wants to terminate a month-to-month tenancy. In both a Predicate Notice and a Petition, disputes can concern the content of the documents, how the documents are served on the tenant, when those documents are served on the tenant (i.e. they can't be too early or too late before the hearing date for the Petition or after the tenant's breach for the Predicate Notice), and even issues that arise when the person who signed the documents is not the proper party (i.e. landlord's attorneys or agents who are unknown to the tenant cannot sign and a landlord who was not the original landlord to the lease must establish his authority through documentation accompanying the Petition and Predicate Notices if not already known to the tenant). Savvy tenants know to dispute every aspect of the service of everything. Plus, these tenants understand the value in making the case about how the landlord didn't observe the required procedures instead of a case about the tenant wrongfully possessing the landlord's property.
Adapted from this Dan's Papers Article.