Bizelia v. Clinton Towers Management
- John Cronan
- 1:20-cv-08065
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 13
In Bizelia v. Clinton Towers Housing Co., Inc., Judge Cronan denied defendants’ motion to dismiss disability discrimination claims as potentially timely.
The ruling affected Jack Bizelia, Anahit Matevosyan, and Hripsime Harutyunyan, whose Fair Housing Act case against Clinton Towers Housing Co., Inc. and P&L Management and Consulting, Inc. was allowed to continue past the statute-of-limitations challenge.
What happened
In Bizelia v. Clinton Towers Housing Co., Inc., three Clinton Towers residents alleged that the building’s managers violated the Fair Housing Act by refusing or delaying requests for a larger apartment as a disability-related accommodation.
The defendants argued that the residents filed their lawsuit too late under the Act’s two-year deadline. The residents pointed to later events, including a manager’s statement and eviction proceedings, that could support a finding that their accommodation request was denied within the deadline.
Judge John P. Cronan denied the motion to dismiss because factual questions remained about when the alleged denial occurred. The court did not decide whether the residents ultimately proved disability discrimination or whether the claim was timely.
The detailed version
- Bizelia v. Clinton Towers Management · No. 1:20-cv-08065
- John Cronan
- May 31, 2022
Background
Jack Bizelia, Anahit Matevosyan, and Hripsime Harutyunyan were co-tenants of a one-bedroom apartment at Clinton Towers. The amended complaint alleged that Bizelia and Matevosyan had medical conditions and that the residents repeatedly asked Clinton Towers Housing Co., Inc. and P&L Management and Consulting, Inc. for a larger apartment as a reasonable accommodation under the Fair Housing Act. The alleged requests included transfers to two- or three-bedroom apartments.
The residents alleged that they made requests between 2016 and 2021. They said that, after an April 2018 request, an on-site manager told Harutyunyan that they were first on the waiting list, provided transfer paperwork, and showed her a possible three-bedroom unit. The residents alleged that the manager later failed to complete the transfer process, said, “You did this to yourself. You’re going to suffer,” and that the defendants then began eviction proceedings. The amended complaint also alleged problems with annual recertification, increased rent, and the rejection of a request to make Harutyunyan head of the household.
Defendants’ Motion
The defendants moved to dismiss the amended complaint solely on statute-of-limitations grounds. The Fair Housing Act generally requires a lawsuit to be filed within two years after the alleged discriminatory housing practice occurred or ended. Because the residents filed the original complaint on September 29, 2020, the court treated September 29, 2018, as the operative cutoff date. The court explained that the amended complaint related back to the original complaint because it arose from the same conduct.
On a motion to dismiss, the court generally accepts the complaint’s factual allegations as true and draws reasonable inferences for the plaintiffs. A statute-of-limitations defense can support dismissal at that stage only when the complaint itself shows that the claim is untimely and there is no factual dispute about when the alleged violation occurred.
Court’s Analysis
The court explained that a Fair Housing Act claim generally accrues when the plaintiff knows or has reason to know of the injury. For a reasonable-accommodation request, the violation occurs when the defendant actually or constructively denies the request. A constructive denial can occur when an accommodation request is met with an unreasonable, indefinite delay rather than an explicit refusal. Whether a delay amounts to constructive denial depends on the facts, including whether the delay suggests unreasonableness, unwillingness to accommodate, or bad faith, rather than mere administrative error.
The court found no allegation showing that the defendants actually or constructively denied the July 2017 requests before September 29, 2018. The amended complaint alleged that the defendants did not respond, but it did not allege that the failure to respond was motivated by bad faith or discriminatory intent. The court also found that the events following the April 2018 request initially suggested that the request was being processed rather than denied.
The court nevertheless found factual questions about when the alleged denial occurred. The manager’s statement could plausibly be understood as expressing discriminatory intent, and the later eviction proceedings also supported a possible finding of constructive denial. Because the amended complaint did not specify when those events occurred, the court could not conclude at the motion-to-dismiss stage that the residents could prove no facts showing an alleged denial on or after September 29, 2018.
The court declined to consider the defendants’ additional argument that the amended complaint failed to state a claim because the defendants raised that argument for the first time in their reply brief. The court also did not decide whether the continuing-violation doctrine applied.
Disposition
Judge John P. Cronan denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss the amended complaint. The ruling left unresolved whether the Fair Housing Act claim was timely and whether the residents would ultimately prevail on their allegations.
Read the full 13-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.