The Specifics of Search Success…

Addressing the specific and unique needs of today’s niche community of New York's co-op and condo professionals, Case Law Tracker does the heavy lifting—combing through and drawing out the cases most relevant to your needs.

Case Summaries

Focusing only on co-op and condo cases, practicing attorneys in this field prepare case summaries and useful takeaways - helping you understand what the case is about so you can quickly determine if it benefits you.

Case View

Our Quick View feature enables you to instantly determine if the case is relevant to your needs and provides you with a fast click to the full details of the case including judges, case history, as well as an active slip op link to related court documents.

Monthly Digest & Monthly Advance Sheet

A pdf Digest of all co-op/condo cases added to the database is emailed monthly to you. Plus, to keep you up to date on what the courts have most recently decided, you'll receive, monthly, an Advance Sheet with case names, decision and docket links, judges, and brief decision excerpts.

Searchable Database

Speeding you to exactly what you need, our robust search offers: a simple quick search; dropdown menus to refine that search; and powerful filtering capability that lets you drill down even further by court, judge, residence, tag, and date.

Advisory Panel

Our experienced advisory committee, comprised of industry-specific experts who truly understand the issues that matter to you, write the case summaries. They know what you need to know and help you get to that information as quickly and easily as possible.

Case Watch

Emailed twice-monthly, Case Watch focus on providing insight on one particularly relevant case—clearly explaining what happened, why it’s important, and what lessons can be learned within. Case Watch reaches two audiences: lawyers who subscribe to the Co-op & Condo Case Law Tracker and Habitat Magazine subscribers (co-op and condo board directors, property managers and other industry professionals).

Case Notes See all

Case Notes provides insight on one particularly relevant co-op or condo case—clearly explaining what happened, why it’s important, and what lessons can be learned within.

First published: May 2026
Is Your Building’s Insurance Really Protecting Owners?

TAKEAWAY This case is an important reminder that boards should not assume their governing documents or insurance policies automatically protect owners from lawsuits brought by the building’s insurer. If a board wants to limit subrogation claims against unit owners or shareholders, the waiver language in both the governing documents and the insurance policies must be clear, direct, and consistent. Vague phrases such as “if obtainable” or “may waive” may not provide the protection boards and residents think they do. Boards should periodically review their bylaws, proprietary leases, alteration agreements, and insurance policies with experienced legal and insurance professionals to confirm that coverage and waiver provisions reflect the building’s intentions. For a unit owner to suddenly learn that they can be sued by the building’s insurance company when there is damage can be a rather startling, and expensive, surprise.

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First published: May 2026
The Portal Workaround Didn’t Work

TAKEAWAY This case is a useful reminder that shareholders' rights to inspect books and records are broad, and courts have consistently enforced them. The bar for a "valid purpose" is not high — organizing a special shareholder meeting and communicating with fellow shareholders about corporate matters clears it. Boards that refuse these requests, or try to work around them by offering to relay information on a shareholder's behalf, are unlikely to prevail in court. The one win for the co-op here was the denial of the engineering and construction records, because Levy couldn't connect those documents to his stated purpose of calling a special meeting. That illustrates an important principle: a shareholder's request must be tied to a purpose reasonably related to their interest as a shareholder, and courts will trim requests that overreach. Before fighting a books-and-records demand, boards should carefully assess whether the request is well-founded. Unless a request overreaches, fails to supply a valid purpose, or raises some comparable deficiency, courts have routinely granted them — making litigation an expensive and uncertain path for the board.

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First published: May 2026
Condo Board's Failure to Shut Off Water Leads to Negligence Claim

THE LESSON FOR BOARDS This is one of the rare occasions where the board of a condominium had seemingly done things right. Even so, they were sued. The board learned of a leak in a water main and fixed it within 10 days. In light of the fact that the board would have to meet, decide which plumber to hire, and decide on which of two repair options the engineering firm presented, the 10 days seems reasonable. The one action the board did not take was the fatal one, and this resulted in the court rejecting the board’s request for a dismissal of the negligence claim. The court determined that the board’s failure to turn off the water (resulting in continued flooding onto the neighbor’s property) may have indeed been negligence. A more careful analysis of the entire situation, and how it would affect the adjacent property, might have saved the board and the condominium from a potentially costly claim of negligence.

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