Appellate Term Affirms: A Pro Se Tenant Does Not Forfeit Her Defenses by Signing a Stipulation

420 E. 80th LLC v Coles, 2025 NY Slip Op 50767(U) (App Term, 1st Dept 2025), affg 78 Misc 3d 1240(A) (Civ Ct, NY County 2023)

By Singh & Rani LLP

---

Tenants who sign stipulations without a lawyer often assume the deal is final. It frequently is not. In 420 E. 80th LLC v Coles, Civil Court vacated a so-ordered stipulation, judgment, and warrant of eviction days before the landlord could execute — and on May 15, 2025, the Appellate Term, First Department, unanimously affirmed, with costs.

Bikram Singh of Singh & Rani LLP represented the tenant in both Civil Court and the Appellate Term.

What Happened

The landlord brought a "commercial" licensee holdover to recover a parking space in its residential apartment building. Our client, then self-represented, signed a so-ordered stipulation of settlement on November 7, 2022 that included a judgment and warrant. The landlord served a default notice in late February 2023, then a fourteen-day notice of eviction with an earliest eviction date of March 27, 2023.

Bikram Singh was then retained and moved by order to show cause to stay execution, vacate the stipulation, judgment, and warrant, and dismiss the proceeding.

Civil Court: Vacatur Granted

Civil Court, New York County (Ilana J. Marcus, J.) granted the motion in substantial part by order entered May 16, 2023.

Stipulations are favored and not lightly set aside (Hallock v State of New York, 64 NY2d 224 [1984]). But a court may relieve a party of a stipulation on a showing of fraud, collusion, mistake, accident, or a comparable ground — including where a party entered the agreement inadvertently, unadvisedly, or improvidently to their prejudice (Matter of Frutiger, 29 NY2d 143 [1971]).

In exercising that discretion, the court weighed the two factors that recur throughout the Appellate Term's case law: whether the party was represented by counsel when the stipulation was signed, and whether potentially meritorious defenses exist (2701 Grand Assn. LLC v Morel, 50 Misc 3d 139[A]; Tabak Assoc., LLC v Vargas, 48 Misc 3d 143[A]; Northtown Roosevelt LLC v Daniels, 35 Misc 3d 137[A]; 2722 8th LLC v Watson, 10 Misc 3d 140[A]; Striver 140 LLC v Cruz, 1 Misc 3d 29).

Both cut in our client's favor.

She was unrepresented. That alone is not dispositive, but it framed everything that followed.

The parking space may be a rent-stabilized ancillary service. Our client asserted she is the rightful successor to her late uncle's rent-stabilized apartment and that the parking space is an ancillary service to that tenancy. We submitted portions of a 1970 lease between the landlord and her uncle that included the parking space as part of the rental property. The court acknowledged the proof was incomplete — no succession documentation, no full lease — but held it sufficient to raise a possibly meritorious defense (see 9 NYCRR 2520.6[r][3], 2522.5[g]; Netherland Operating Corp. v Eimicke, 135 AD2d 352 [1st Dept 1987]; First Lenox Terrace Assoc. v Hill, 13 Misc 3d 488 [Civ Ct, NY County 2006]).

The landlord's own affidavit helped. It conceded the parking space had been provided to the deceased rent-stabilized tenant in June 2019, and argued that the estate — not our client — was the lawful tenant in occupancy. Having taken that position, the landlord had not named the estate as a respondent. The court found that omission raised yet another possibly meritorious defense (see RPL 236; Joint Props. Owners, Inc. v Deri, 113 AD2d 691 [1st Dept 1986]; Westway Plaza Assocs. v Doe, 179 AD2d 408 [1st Dept 1992]).

The court vacated the stipulation, judgment, and warrant, and permitted our client to answer within ten days. Outright dismissal was denied — the case proceeded on the merits rather than ending on a defaulted settlement.

Appellate Term: Affirmed

The landlord appealed. On May 15, 2025, a panel of the Appellate Term, First Department (Hagler, P.J., Tisch and James, JJ.) affirmed per curiam, with $10 costs, holding that Civil Court properly exercised its discretion.

Three aspects of the decision are worth noting.

The standard, restated. The panel framed the discretionary authority in the language of 1420 Concourse Corp. v Cruz, 135 AD2d 371, 373 (1st Dept 1987), appeal dismissed 73 NY2d 868 (1989): a court may relieve parties of a stipulation where it appears the stipulation was entered into inadvisedly, or that it would be inequitable to hold the parties to it. That formulation — inadvisedly or inequitably — is the one to cite on a vacatur motion in the First Department.

The defenses were not forfeited. The most useful sentence in the decision for tenant-side practitioners is the panel's holding that these defenses should not be deemed forfeited by respondent's uncounseled decision to consent to judgment (see Tabak Assoc., LLC v Vargas, 48 Misc 3d 143[A]). A pro se consent to judgment is not a waiver of substantive rent-stabilization rights.

The defenses identified. The panel credited two: that the parking space may be an ancillary service provided to the deceased uncle's rent-stabilized tenancy, to which our client intends to claim succession (see Royal Terrace Assoc. LP v Singh, 39 Misc 3d 135[A], 2013 NY Slip Op 50582[U] [App Term, 1st Dept 2013]); and whether the deceased tenant's estate should have been named as a necessary party, since his last lease renewal had not yet expired (see Joint Props. Owners v Deri, 113 AD2d 691).

The panel expressly stated it was expressing no view on the ultimate outcome of the proceeding.

Takeaways

• A signed stipulation is not the end of the analysis. Where a tenant was unrepresented and has a colorable defense, vacatur is available even after default and even after a fourteen-day notice has been served — and that determination will be reviewed deferentially on appeal.
• An uncounseled consent to judgment does not waive rent-stabilization defenses. Coles now supplies a clean appellate citation for that proposition.
• Meritorious does not mean proven. Civil Court expressly noted the succession proof was incomplete, and the Appellate Term affirmed anyway. At the vacatur stage the question is whether a defense possibly exists.
• Labeling a proceeding "commercial" does not make it so. A parking space attached to a rent-stabilized tenancy in a residential building is not automatically a standalone commercial license — a point the Appellate Term signaled by placing the word in quotation marks.
• Pleading theory has consequences. A landlord who argues the estate is the lawful tenant should have named the estate, particularly where the last lease renewal had not expired.

---

Singh & Rani LLP represents tenants and landlords in Housing Court, Civil Court, Supreme Court, and on appeal throughout New York City, with particular depth in rent stabilization, succession, and holdover litigation. Bikram Singh represented the tenant in 420 E. 80th LLC v Coles in Civil Court and on appeal. If you signed a stipulation without counsel and are now facing eviction, time matters — but the door is not necessarily closed.

Singh & Rani LLP 5 Penn Plaza, 19th Floor New York, NY 10001

---

Attorney Advertising. This article is for general informational purposes only, does not constitute legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.