A Bronxville resident has sued her housing cooperative for $450,000 for allegedly failing to fix water damages caused by defective plumbing in another apartment.
Nicole P. Nolan accused the Standish – Cabot Apartments Inc of negligence and nuisance, in a complaint filed on Aug. 22 in Westchester Supreme Court.
“The uninhabitable conditions in the apartment,” the complaint states, “occurred and persisted through no fault” of Nolan.
Standish – Cabot consists of 33 apartments in two 4-story buildings, at Alden Place and Midland Avenue near Scout Field and the Bronx River.
Nolan bought shares in the co-op in 2005 and lives in a first floor apartment. The apartment above hers has been subleased to a couple for three or four years, according to the complaint.
On April 7, water leaking from the upstairs bathroom allegedly flooded Nolan’s place, damaging the ceilings, walls, and floors in her bedrooms and bathroom.
The damages have not been fixed for nearly five months, according to the complaint.
Three days after the leak, the co-op hired a plumber to repair the upstairs apartment, the complaint states, but took no action to mitigate water damage in Nolan’s apartment.
Five weeks after the incident, an inspector hired by the co-op confirmed the presence of mold and recommended remediation. Despite the findings, the complaint states, the co-op has not cleaned up the mold or fixed the apartment.
Nolan claims that the co-op president visited her apartment on Aug. 1, ostensibly to inspect the damages but actually to look for violations unrelated to the mold and water damages, so as to shift responsibility to her.
Nolan’s attorney, Ian J. Brandt, argues in the complaint that he lease required the co-op to repair the apartment “as speedily as reasonably possible after a flood” and to reduce the monthly maintenance fee until the apartment was habitable. He says the co-op also has a duty to restore the apartment to a habitable condition, by remediating mold and replacing water-damaged ceilings, walls, floors, electrical systems and fixtures.
Nolan is demanding that the co-op repair the apartment and pay $350,000 to compensate her out-of-pocket costs, such as additional living expenses, storage, moving, and professional fees, as well as the apartment’s diminished rental value.
She is demanding $100,000 in punitive damages, “due to the appalling duration and severity of the uninhabitable conditions in the apartment which the [co-op] board willingly allowed to persist unabated for an unreasonable duration.”
Barhite and Holzinger Inc., a Bronxville real estate company that manages the Standish – Cabot Apartments, did not reply to an email asking for a response to the allegations.
