New York Law Blog

-New York state governor David Patterson signed a new law this week that would make it legal for gas stations to sell unbranded gasoline. The move was made to keep prices competitive as they continue to soar, putting a damper on those who have long commutes.

While affiliated stations are typically required under contract to buy gas made by those companies, the new law permits such stations — provided they own their tanks and pumps — to buy cheaper unbranded gas that can be purchased at a discount, the Albany Times-Union reported.

"At a time when New Yorkers are struggling to cover the basic cost of commuting to work, the governor signed this bill in an effort to lower gas prices for consumers," the governor’s spokeswoman, Erin Duggan, told the paper. "This legislation is expected to create a more competitive retail environment, which should lead to savings at the gas pump."

-The database cataloging all of the handguns in New York state has yet to lead to a single criminal prosecution, and that has many questioning whether the funds would be better appropriated in another fashion. State police claim that it takes seven to ten years for a firearm to show up in a crime, so the system hasn’t been allowed enough time to work.

Since March 2001, identifying information about more than 200,000 new pistols and revolvers sold in New York have been entered into the Combined Ballistic Identification System database maintained by state police. New York and Maryland are the only two states that maintain statewide databases.

New guns are test fired, and the minute markings the guns make on the shell casings are recorded and entered into the digital database.Proponents say the markings are as unique as fingerprints and can be compared against shell casings found at crime scenes. The results as of August: 209,239 casings entered into New York’s database, 7,124 inquiries and two hits.

-The city of New York is suing several smoke shops on a Long Island indian reservation for selling tax free cigarettes to bootleggers:

The lawsuit accuses the small cluster of shops on the Poospatuck Indian Reservation of breaking state and federal law by selling massive quantities of cigarettes to bootleggers.

It says the bootlegged smokes are then smuggled off the reserve and resold throughout the New York metropolitan area. Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration says the practice has gone on for years and costs the city and state hundreds of millions of dollars annually in lost tax revenue.

-New  York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has recently outlawed what is known as “base jumping”. After several high profile cases of citizens scaling the New York Times building broadens the law for this particular event.

The bill signed by Bloomberg "prohibits climbing, jumping or suspending oneself from structures without the approval of the police department and the owner of the structure."

The law targets freelance practioners of a sport known as BASE jumping, which stands for Building, Antenna, Span or Earth. Climbers scale large objects, sometimes descending by parachute or wingsuit.

Something for the “I never thought I’d hear that!” category, lawsuits against New York City landlords are coming fast and furious for none other than bedbug infestations. For over 100 years (a 1908 case, Jacobs v. Morand stated that tenants must pay rent, regardless of vermin infestation), the bed bug law stated that the tenant was responsible for any infestation problems, but that all changed with a 2004 court case.

According to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, which keeps track of complaints about bed bugs and issues violations against property owners who fail to exterminate them, there were 8,830 bed bug complaints in fiscal year 2008, which ended June 30, up from 1,839 in 2005. This year, the department issued 2,757 bed bug violations, up from 366 in 2005.

In New York City, landlords are responsible for getting rid of bed bugs in infested buildings and units and they must pay for extermination.

This was not always the case, but a turning point was a 2004 case, Ludlow Properties, LLC, vs. Young, in which Judge Cyril Bedford sided with a tenant who refused to pay rent for six months because of a persistent bed bug problem.

"Although bedbug are classified as vermin, they are unlike the more common situation of vermin such as mice and roaches, which, although offensive, do not have the effect on one’s life as bedbugs do, feeding upon one’s blood in hoards nightly turning what is supposed to be bed rest or sleep into a hellish experience," Judge Bedford wrote.

Proof of infestation origins are hard to prove and being called into question, but the issues are real and being heard in New York City courts frequently.

After Sunday night’s Yankee Stadium finale, ownership of the final home run ball ever hit in the park has come into question. When the ball fell into the net covering the area in left-center field, a fan grabbed a hold of the ball through the net. After being instructed by security to let it go, it fell into the hands of another fan in the area. Security retrieved the ball and returned it to the first fan, as in accordance with the rules of Yankee Stadium. The second fan is pursuing his legal avenues, which have been an issue with other big time baseballs:

Legal experts have studied this kind of thing. Paul Finkelman, a professor at Albany Law School, was quoted in a Cardozo Law Review article titled “Fugitive Baseballs and Abandoned Property: Who Owns the Home Run Ball?” The article described a symposium that touched on Barry Bonds’s 500th career homer.

As for the Molina homer, Professor Finkelman said, “it appears to me that when it went into the net, it went into the legal possession of the New York Yankees, and if stadium officials retrieve the ball and say ‘We’ll give it to you’ — whoever they’re pointing to — they have the right to do that.”

The Yankees organization is investigating the incident to see who indeed the ball belongs to. Auctioneers believe the ball could retrieve anywhere from $25-50,000 so there is obviously a lot at stake. It appears though, that by the rules and laws of Yankee Stadium, the ball is in the hands of it’s rightful owner.

Yankee Stadium had a long-established procedure for when a ball is caught in a net and a fan reaches into the net to grab it, according to Howard J. Rubenstein, a spokesman for the Yankees.

He said that the guards were instructed to tell a fan to let go of the ball, and once it was free of the net, a guard would return it.

The fan “doesn’t give up his ownership, he only gives up custody,” Mr. Rubenstein said.