COOP BOARD CANNOT FORCE COUPLE TO
This case involved the dispute between a cooperative board and the owner of several commercial units in the building. The issue raised on appeal was whether adjoining properties owned separately by a wife and husband can be designated by the coop board as a jointly owned single unit in order to enforce a certain house rule barring access to the wife’s property. In this case, the appellants were married doctors both holding shares and professional space in a Central Park South building owned by 230 Park South Apartments Inc., a cooperative corporation. The wife owned commercial units 1F, 1G, 2F and 2G where she operated her medical practice in the building since 1978 and has done so as the tenant-shareholder of all four combined apartments since 1988. She held four separate stock certificates and four separate proprietary leases to the four units. The appellant’s husband owned commercial units 1D and 1E and operated a medical practice there more commonly known as a fertility clinic. These two units were treated as one combined unit and the doctor held a single stock certificate and a single proprietary lease for both units. It was also known that his units had street access. At about the same time that the wife acquired her stock and lease for the last apartment in 1988, the board of directors adopted a resolution approving the permanent and lawful use of the apartments occupied by her for professional and commercial purposes in connection with her medical practice and recognized the single entrance door installed at a location accessible through the building’s lobby. This was the only entrance from outside the building to her medical practice. In April 2005, the House Rules were revised providing that “no patient or anyone accompanying a patient of any doctor who has an office in the building shall be permitted to sit or wait in the lobby area, public hallways, elevator hallways or doorway of the building for any reason whatsoever.” The board’s counsel wrote to the doctor directing her to remove two signs pursuant to a house rule which stated that no signs, notices or advertisements could be inscribed or exposed on the building without board approval. The wife’s practice is the only medical office that does not have a street entrance and consequently, she was the only shareholder affected by the amended house rules. The coop determined that her patients could use the door from the street to her husband’s offices in order to enter her medical office. The coop relied on the fact that at some time in 1990 a door was installed to connect her office to the kitchen and her husband’s medical office for the convenience of her staff. In order to enter her waiting room, a patient would have to enter through her husband’s front street entrance, pass through the waiting area and the exam room hallway of the fertility clinic, turn left and walk through a kitchen and up a stairway to enter her staff office area before entering the medical practice waiting area. The wife commenced this action seeking a declaration that the amended house rules were invalid as well as an injunction prohibiting and enjoining the enforcement of the rules. The lower court denied the doctor’s motion for a preliminary injunction finding no likelihood of success on the merits. It further determined from the photographs and evidence that the spaces comprised a single “integrated office space.” The lower court granted the coop’s cross motion and dismissed the complaint. The Appellate Division reversed the decision claiming that the lower court’s decision “essentially stands for the novel and legally untenable proposition that merely because parties are married, property held separately becomes property held jointly for the benefit of an independent third party. Thus, the court erred in determining that the six units comprise a single space and so were jointly owned by the appellant and her husband.” The Appellate Court did not find any evidence from the record to suggest that the six units were, or are, jointly owned. While the coop corporation relied heavily on the fact that there was a door connecting the wife’s medical office with her husband’s fertility clinic, this fact alone was not dispositive of joint ownership. “Property rights are not affected by any decision of neighboring owners to remove barriers to entry between their properties. The relevant determination is that the separate properties of husband and wife were not magically converted into one jointly owned property without any conveyance in writing but merely by appellant’s husband statement… that he may have owned all six units… even if the statement was made under oath and was mistaken.” Finally, the court acknowledged that it is a “basic tenet of New York Property Law that property owned separately by two parties cannot be combined into a joint ownership on the order of an independent third party. Simply because the two parties involved are married does not change this principal. While property acquired separately during marriage may be combined and equitably distributed during a divorce proceeding, there is no legal authority since the Married Woman’s Act of 1860 that would allow a third party to compel married parties to combine their separate properties into joint ownership during marriage. Dhamoon v. 230 Park South Apartments Inc., Appellate Division, First Department (NYLJ 1/3/2008.
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