Braverman Greenspun<\/a> who isn\u2019t involved in this case but frequently represents both tenants and landlords in rent nonpayment cases, said he found the ruling notable and out of the norm. According to him, many LLCs have been served by landlords simply dropping service papers off at their place of business. Additionally, he said attorneys and judges have not historically argued or ruled that LLCs need to be served differently than other entities, despite the technical differences in law.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019ve been doing this for over 40 years and I have never seen anybody raise this as a defense\u2026 There are plenty of limited liability companies who\u2019ve been respondents in these cases, and nobody has ever tossed it out,\u201d Zingman said. \u201cThe judge herself only found one other similar case when she was looking\u2026in Staten Island, and that judge [ruled] the other way. So, her case is a semi-first impression [on the matter].\u201d<\/p>\n
He said if Greenfield\u2019s decision is accepted as precedent, landlords should take note and serve their LLC tenants accordingly, in order to ensure their filings go through and they\u2019re able to file rent nonpayment cases efficiently.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it were to be accepted [as precedent], and if it goes beyond New York County, landlords have to start thinking, for planning purposes, when they\u2019re leasing space, that they really know who managers or members are of the limited liability company and where they\u2019re going to be,\u201d Zingman said. \u201cOr\u2026insist that [tenants] appoint an agent to accept service or process who you know you can get to.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the tenant side, Zingman said the ruling may make it easier for LLCs and their attorneys to fight rent nonpayment claims on a technicality and give more credence to other tenant attorneys who want to use the same argument against landlords if LLCs receive service papers that are just dropped off at their storefront.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI represent both landlords and tenants,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not like I favor one over the other. This makes it considerably more difficult [for landlords] to serve, and a lot of people are going to get caught on this\u2026From the tenant point of view, it\u2019s more of an opportunity to defend against summary proceedings.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n
Greenfield\u2019s reasoning for her ruling was that it must be up to the legislature to make clear whether LLCs and other business entities should be served differently. She acknowledged that LLCs not being included in the RPAPL 735 statute was \u201clikely an oversight,\u201d as LLCs were created decades after that statute was written, but that it wasn\u2019t within the court\u2019s power to modify or expand the rules of existing legislation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Due to that, Zingman said he believed the legislature should modify the RPAPL 735 statute in order to include LLCs, as there was \u201cno public policy reason\u201d why they should be treated differently.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I were the legislature, I would just simply add limited liability company to that statute to cure it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not really changing anything [because it\u2019s] the way people have been doing summary proceedings for decades\u2026The whole purpose of a summary proceeding has always been to provide an expedited resolution on the issue of possession more so than anything else. There\u2019s no reason to treat one type of entity tenant differently than another.\u201d<\/p>\n
For now, in this case between Passerine and its landlords, the landlord\u2019s attorneys could choose to reserve the restaurant according to Greenfield\u2019s ruling by personally giving the papers to a member of the LLC or through the Secretary of State, or appeal the decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Judge Allison Greenfield, who ruled LLCs are exempt from a more relaxed service statute that corporations are eligible…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[2954,2710,35807,75,84,83,9,24,63,1491,7978],"class_list":{"0":"post-69122","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-landlords","9":"tag-law","10":"tag-llcs","11":"tag-manhattan","12":"tag-manhattan-headlines","13":"tag-manhattan-news","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-city","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-real-estate","18":"tag-tenants"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Judge](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Headshot-ARG.jpg\" "\\"Ruling")
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