PROPERTY OWNER (LANDLORD) LIABLE FOR PAYMENT FOR ELECTRICAL WORK REQUIRED BY THE LEASE AND CONTRACTED FOR BY THE LESSEE.

The Fourth Department determined the owner of property leased to the party who hired an electrical contractor was liable for payment of the electrical contractor's mechanic's lien. As part of the lease agreement, the owner/landlord required the lessee (Peaches) to contract for the electrical work. The Fourth Department noted that all the other departments have held the owner is not liable in this context unless the owner directly contracted for the work. The Fourth Department concluded, however, that a Court of Appeals case controlled:

Lien Law § 3 provides in relevant part that a “contractor . . . who performs labor or furnishes materials for the improvement of real property with the consent or at the request of the owner thereof . . . shall have a lien . . . upon the real property improved.” For purposes of this provision, a “requirement in a contract between . . . landlord and tenant, that the . . . tenant shall make certain improvements on the premises is a sufficient consent of the owner to charge his property with claims which accrue in making those improvements” (Jones v Menke, 168 NY 61, 64; see De Klyn v Gould, 165 NY 282, 287). The Court of Appeals subsequently reaffirmed Jones's broad interpretation of section 3 in McNulty Bros. v Offerman (221 NY 98), holding that, as long as “the liens have been confined to work called for by the lease[,] . . . the landlords' estate may be charged to the same extent as if the owners of that estate had ordered the work themselves. In substance, they have made the lessee their agent for that purpose” (id. at 106). Jones and McNulty Bros. have not been overturned or disavowed. Ferrara v Peaches Café LLC, 2016 NY Slip Op 03286, 4th Dept 4-29-16