Gilbert v. 24th Street LIC LLC

Welcome to the informational website for the Gilbert v. 24th Street LIC lawsuit.

If you are a current or former tenant of the building located at 41-42 24th Street, Long Island City, New York 11101 (the “QLIC”), residing in your unit from March 28, 2016, to the present, then you may be a member of a plaintiff class in a lawsuit against the owners of the aforementioned building, which is currently pending in the New York County Supreme Court.

Plaintiff in this lawsuit asserts that Defendant received 421-a tax benefits at the QLIC. Under New York state law, these benefits are only available if all apartments at the QLIC were subject to the rent-stabilization laws. The 421-a Program requires the first rents for apartments participating in that program be set utilizing the amounts the unit’s first occupant was “charged and paid.” Plaintiff asserts that Defendant violated the law by failing to take into account rent concessions received by the initial tenants at the QLIC when registering the first rents for the units. Additionally, Plaintiff asserts that Defendant utilized concessions on subsequent tenancies which were not taken into account when setting preferential rents at the QLIC. Plaintiff asserts that, as a result, tenants at the QLIC were charged more than the maximum legal rent for their apartments and/or were denied the other benefits of rent-stabilization, such as mandatory lease renewals at amounts allowed under New York state law.

On December 3, 2022, the Court certified the lawsuit to proceed as a class action on behalf of “[a]ll tenants at the QLIC living, or who had lived, in apartments on or after March 28, 2016" (the “Class”).

Read the Notice and this website carefully. Your legal rights are affected whether you act or do not act.

Your Legal Rights and Options in This Lawsuit

Do Nothing	If you do not request exclusion from the Class, you will be included in the Class and bound by any judgment ordered by the Court. In the event such judgment results from a settlement by the parties, you will have the right to object to the terms of the settlement, to participate in the settlement, or to exclude yourself from the settlement.
Ask to Be Excluded	If you exclude yourself, you will not be bound by the Court’s determination of Plaintiff’s claims–whether positive or negative to the Class–and you will remain free to pursue your own claim for damages independently. Letters requesting exclusion should be mailed via First-Class Mail and postmarked on or before December 27, 2024.