Reste Realty Corp. v. Cooper

Joy Cooper (defendant) leased a basement commercial space for meetings and sales training in 1958, but the space regularly flooded whenever it rained, sometimes making it unusable. Cooper repeatedly complained to the landlord's managing agent, Arthur Donigian, who took steps to remove the water and, when Cooper renewed into a larger basement space, promised to resurface the driveway above to fix the leak; the resurfacing was done, but the flooding actually worsened. After Donigian died two years into the new five-year lease, no one addressed Cooper's continuing complaints, forcing her to relocate, reschedule, or cancel meetings, until a meeting with representatives from four states was interrupted by five inches of standing water. Cooper then gave notice and abandoned the premises. Reste Realty Corp. (Reste) (plaintiff), which later acquired the building and the lease, sued Cooper for unpaid rent for the remainder of the lease term. The trial court found constructive eviction and ruled for Cooper, but the Appellate Division reversed, finding no evidence of landlord misconduct and finding Cooper had waived any constructive-eviction defense by not vacating promptly enough.