(February 25, 1997)
Fourth Federal Savings Bank, Plaintiff, v 32-22 Owners Corp. et al., Defendants. A/C Electric Corp. et al., Nonparty Appellants; Arthur Gerwin, as Receiver, Respondent.
[653 NYS2d 588]
—Order of the Supreme Court, New York County (Harold Tompkins, J.), entered July 11, 1995, granting the receiver’s application, in a foreclosure proceeding, to compel nonparty commercial and residential tenants to pay accrued and current rent upon pain of eviction, modified, on the law, to the extent of denying the application as to residential tenants, and otherwise affirmed, without costs, and the matter is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with the decision herein.
Plaintiff Fourth Federal Savings Bank commenced an action in May 1994 against defendant 32-22 Owners Corp. to foreclose on a mortgage secured by a lien on property located at 32 East 22nd Street in Manhattan. Supreme Court appointed a receiver in foreclosure and authorized the receiver, inter alia, to collect rents from the building’s five tenants. Each tenant holds a lease which expires in June 2008; two are commercial tenants, two residential, and one with a loft authorized for use for a business purpose. Those tenants, appellants herein, claimed that the premises were in grossly inferior condition; that the building’s elevator was inoperable, its roof leaked, and other problems abounded; and that the building’s landlord, and the court-appointed receiver who succeeded to the landlord’s duty to operate the building, had breached the warranty of habitability owed to the tenants. The tenants also claimed to have expended more than $50,000 of their own money in repairs to the building, and that the landlord of the property is a mere corporate shell, no longer conducting business. The record