This newsletter explores the emerging legal topics and issues affecting the condominium and cooperative services industry. Thought-leading attorneys from Moritt Hock & Hamroff’s Condominium and Cooperative Services Practice Group share their legal insight, experience and best practices on this rapidly evolving area of law.
Major Sidewalk Shed Reform Package Passes The NYC City Council
Sidewalk sheds have come to dominate the visual landscape of New York City, detracting from neighborhood aesthetics, resulting in uninviting neighborhoods and decreased safety. According to reports, New York City currently has more than 8,400 scaffolding structures, many of which remain in place for years. The big news for co-op and condo boards – not to mention anyone who has to navigate the sidewalks of New York City – is that on March 26, 2025, the NYC City Council has passed legislation intended to reform sidewalk shed rules and “hasten the removal of these blights from our neighborhoods.”
The package of five bills encompasses a broad scope of changes. Specifically, (1) Intro 391-A would require the Department of Buildings (DOB) to study new sidewalk shed designs, increase the minimum height of sheds, and allow for different colors of sheds; (2) Intro 393-A would reduce the duration of most sidewalk shed permits from three months to one month, make renewal permits more difficult to secure, and increase penalties for delinquent repairs; (3) Intro 394-A would change the current five-year Façade Inspection and Safety Program (FISP) cycle to a six- to twelve-year cycle, depending on the results of a DOB study to “evaluate the appropriate time period within which critical examinations of a building’s exterior walls and appurtenances should be conducted;” (4) Intro 660 would double the level of lighting required under sheds, while at the same time adding directional requirements so the light does not enter neighboring doors and windows; and (5) Intro 661 introduces “new penalties for failing to submit completed construction documents to DOB within 5 months, failing to file necessary permit applications within 8 months, and failing to fully complete façade repairs within 2 years.”
From a co-op and condo compliance point of view, the foregoing reforms are a mixed bag. The most welcomed development will be the lengthening of the FISP cycle, which could easily save buildings hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next decade, depending on the final cycle lengths.
On the other hand, the tightening of scaffold permit renewal requirements, and increased penalties and fines for failure to comply, have the potential to unduly punish building owners for delays that, more often than not, are outside of their control.
As we have discussed previously, probably the most common source of delay on façade projects – and certainly the most infuriating – is neighboring buildings slow walking or outright refusing requests for access to install protections required by DOB rules, unless the building agrees to pay (often unreasonably high) monthly license fees and other expenses. Without reforming the process by which buildings are able to gain prompt access to their neighbors’ property, this new legislation may just incentivize neighboring buildings to hold out for even more extortionate monthly payments.
Leaving aside the access agreement problem, the shorter renewal periods and paperwork requirements will undoubtedly increase compliance costs for buildings performing facade projects.
In any event, assuming that Mayor Adams does not veto the package, these new rules will take effect on October 1, 2026.
with Nicole Malen
Contract Interpretation In The Age Of E-Mails, Emojis, And Emotions
It is well settled that some types of agreements – particularly real estate agreements – are required to be evidenced by a writing. Similarly, most formal contracts require that any waivers of or modifications to the existing terms must themselves be put in writing.
Once upon a time, a “writing” requirement was a significant hurdle. It meant someone had to physically, deliberately record terms on paper, which took time and effort and generally resulted in a relatively formal record of terms.
However, with the advent of smartphones, electronic communication, and widely reported changes in lifestyle habits (everybody texts, nobody meets in person, et cetera), almost everything is a “writing,” but those writings are more informal and fractured than ever.
When people don’t communicate clearly electronically, they can wind up in court. One recent example is Newmark & Co. Real Estate, Inc. v. Wiesner Products Inc., Index No. 651896/2024 (Sup. Ct. N.Y. Co. 2025), in which a New York court had to interpret whether a plaintiff’s series of dashed-off e-mail responses (“Understood and will do” and “On it Boss! Thank you”) constituted an enforceable waiver. In that case, the court denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss, potentially forcing both sides to spend untold thousands of dollars in discovery costs trying to establish the meaning of those responses.
At least the Newmark case involved e-mail, an almost anachronistic mode of communication these days. Courts are now being asked to interpret the meaning of emojis, gifs, and emoticons in text chains and Signal chats, making the search for parties’ mutual intent ever more complicated.
For example, one recent decision in Canada ruled that a thumb’s up emoji (👍🏼) was sufficient to create a contract between a grain buyer and a farmer, despite the court “readily acknowledge[ing] that a [thumbs-up] emoji is a non-traditional means to ‘sign’ a document.” South West Terminal Ltd. v. Achter Land, 2023 SKKB 116 (CanLII). That result contrasts with a New York result in 2022, which held on similar facts that the defendants were not bound to a repayment plan merely because one defendant had thumbs-upped (👍🏼) the plaintiff’s text describing the proposed terms. Lightstone Re LLC v. Zinntex LLC, 2022 N.Y. Slip Op. 32931 (Sup. Ct. N.Y. Co. 2022).
The takeaway is that people who insist on doing business using ambiguous modes of modern communication can look forward to the expense and uncertainty of modern litigation.
with Danielle Halevi
New Commercial Division Monetary Requirements For Cases Seeking Equitable Or Declaratory Relief
The Commercial Division of the New York State Supreme Court is the trial-level forum in the state court system designated to preside over complex commercial litigations. The Commercial Division was originally created to better compete for litigation business with the federal courts and private arbitral forums, in hopes that sophisticated litigants with significant business disputes would choose to have those disputes resolved in the state court system.
In order to ensure that Commercial Division judges and staff are equipped to manage these types of cases, the Division has always required certain minimum monetary thresholds to be met as a predicate to Commercial Division jurisdiction. Those monetary thresholds have gone up and up over the years, to the point that in New York County, the minimum monetary threshold for a case to be heard in the Commercial Division is $500,000.
However, for cases principally seeking equitable or declaratory relief, those monetary thresholds did not always apply. This apparently resulted in a large volume of relatively “minor” disputes that were clogging up the dockets of the Commercial Division judges.
Accordingly, the Commercial Division has now amended its rules to require that even for those cases that seek equitable or declaratory relief, the “value of the object of the action” must meet the court’s monetary requirements.
The “value of the object of the action” is a concept borrowed from federal law and is defined in the rule as being “the value of the suit’s intended benefit, the value of the right being protected, or the value of the injury being averted, whichever is greatest.”
The bottom line is that litigants will no longer be able to sidestep the Commercial Division’s monetary thresholds merely by asserting claims for equitable or declaratory relief. For co-ops and condos looking to litigate in the Commercial Division, they should consult with counsel to determine whether the “value of the object of the action” is valuable enough to qualify under the Division’s new rules.
