City Seeks To Manage TV & Movie Shoots

City processes encourages the numerous movie and TV shows using New York City as a backdrop. New York City is currently experiencing a golden age of television and movie-making. The advantages to such a booming industry seem undoubtedly positive, but some argue that daily life can be marred by the constant displacement due to filming on local streets. Residents of specific communities claim that the negatives outweigh the positives when films use a particular location … <Read More>


HPD’s Lien for Shelter Upheld

HPD provided temporary housing for tenants and then filed liens against the tenants’ former landlords for expenses in providing the temporary housing. The Court of Appeals issued one opinion involving two separate cases concerning expenses incurred by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development for temporary shelter. In 1995 the Fire Department issued a vacate order affecting two tenants of a building in Brooklyn owned by David Rivera. HPD provided the tenants with temporary … <Read More>


Strong Community Support Voiced for Twin Commercial Buildings which Housed Studio of de Kooning, and other Post-WWII Artists

Attorney for owner threatened to seek demolition through a hardship application should landmarks designate the property and not permit a visible addition. At its meeting on October 17, 2017, the Landmarks Preservation Commission held a hearing on the possible individual landmarks designation of two twin adjoining buildings at 827 and 831 Broadway. Completed in 1867, the buildings were designed by architect Griffith Thomas for tobacco-company heir Pierre Lorillard in an Italian palazzi-inspired design. Built … <Read More>


Trees: Tort Liability For Injuries Involving Trees

Trees under the common law were considered natural conditions with the result that possessors of land were not liable for injuries caused trees. Professor William Prosser wrote in the first edition of the hornbook on Torts (1941) that the traditional common law rule was that the possessor of land was under no affirmative duty to make safe dangerous conditions on the land that were natural in origin. Prosser went on to say, however, that there … <Read More>


The Practice of Policing; Evolution in the Police Profession

Adapted from remarks given by former NYPD Commissioner Bratton at a CityLaw Breakfast on October 7, 2016.

I would like to talk to you about the practice of policing over the last fifty years, not only in this city, but this country. New York City can rightfully claim to be the safest large city in America and, I would argue, probably one of the safest large cities in the world. And it’s something that didn’t … <Read More>


Three-Quarter Housing: Council Seeks to Address Blight [UPDATE: City Council Approves Legislation]

UPDATE: On February 1, 2017, the City Council voted 47-0 to approve four bills that would help protect tenants of three-quarter houses in New York City. During the vote, Council Member Donovan Richards called three-quarter houses a wide spread problem that would not be cured by the bills and that the City would need to track progress on the issue to determine future responses. Council Member Ritchie Torres called predatory operators of three-quarter houses the … <Read More>