No Need for Proof of Agent’s Authority—Five-Day Notice Demanding Rent Valid
The Second Department determined a five-day notice demanding unpaid rent under a lease was not invalid because it was signed by a purported agent of the landlord without proof of the agent’s authority to act for the landlord. In so finding, the Second Department distinguished a case relied upon by the tenant:
…[T]he Appellate Term properly distinguished this Court’s decision in Siegel v Kentucky Fried Chicken of Long Is. (108 AD2d at 221). … Siegel is limited to the “factual peculiarities” of the lease in that case. The lease in Siegel, unlike the lease in the case at bar, designated certain rights that were to be exercised by “the Landlord or Landlord’s agent[ ]” and designated the landlord’s attorney by name, while the three-day forfeiture notice that was the subject of that dispute was sent by another attorney, who was unknown to the tenant …. The relevant provision of the lease herein (hereinafter the notice provision), provided that the “Landlord shall give Tenant written notice of default stating the type of default,” and, unlike the lease in Siegel, did not expressly obligate [landlord] to act only personally or through an identified agent. Consequently, although the notice indicated that it was signed by [landlord’s] previously unidentified agent, the failure to include evidence of the agent’s authority to bind the landlord, which we found necessary in Siegel, did not render [landlord] noncompliant with the requirements of the notice provision (see RPAPL 711[2]), and did not render the notice invalid. Matter of QPII-143-45 Sanford Ave, LLC v Spinner, 2013 NY Slip Op 05083, 2nd Dept 7-3-13