Queens Man Evicted Over Name Error
written by Gabby Miller and Taylor Dudley
New York, NY — Silence filled the halls of the Queens County Civil Courthouse on an unusual Tuesday morning. All but one of the judges were away at an annual judicial seminar, but housing court remained in session.
Breaking that silence was a 57-year old Queens resident and recent evictee, Agha Muhammad Saleh, talking to an attorney who provides tenants free legal services.
“Tell them that I don’t want to speak to the super,” Saleh yelled. The superintendent, Sam Dino, who was not in attendance, is an employee of Dino Realty Corp., the company responsible for his eviction.
This was not a standard case. Several court summons had been delivered to Saleh’s home, but he insists that he was not the person named in the eviction notice.
“Who is Mustafa?” asked presiding Judge John Landsen in the Sept. 24th hearing. The Mustafa in question was Mustafa Elshenhaby. Saleh said that he had no idea who that was and that he’d never met him, but the judge said he needed to return the next day with a copy of his lease.
However, it was in the 11x16 ft. studio apartment Saleh was locked out of.
The day of Saleh’s eviction was chaotic. In a video obtained by The Blueprint, there was nothing but shouting as Saleh’s family members dragged into the hallway only a suitcase, a tote bag, and a box overflowing with blankets.
The eviction marshals and NYPD officers, there to escort Saleh off the premises, wouldn’t listen to him when he tried to explain that Mustafa Elshenhaby was not a tenant in his apartment. Saleh made several attempts to show the two police officers his photo ID, but they refused to inspect it.
“The guy doesn’t live here,” Saleh repeatedly said to the male NYPD officer about Elshenhaby. The officer, speaking over him, responded, “If he doesn’t live here, he should leave then.”
Elshenhaby has not lived in the building for almost two decades.
The only response the police gave was that he’d have to take it up with the judge in court. There was no recourse.
Jennifer Gomez from the Marshal’s Office of the Department of Investigations explained the standard eviction protocol. “It goes through the court, the judge signs off on it. The marshal is the last person in this process,” said Gomez. “When an eviction warrant goes out, it is for the address, and everyone, even those not listed on the warrant, must leave the premises and go to court.”
With nowhere to go until his court date, Saleh slept in his car for the week.
He suspects that he is one of the many rent stabilized tenants being evicted from the property under new management. As John Dino, the building’s landlord, got older, his son-in-law, Sam Dino, started taking charge. “I’m a tenant for 20 years. The landlord was a wonderful man and we have a wonderful relationship and we never had any problems because he was not running the property for money making,” said Saleh.
Now he claims that the younger management is out for profit. “So this realty company is being run by a crook. He’s playing with the law. Two years ago they produced a case to evict me with the same name of this person,” said Saleh. After repeated efforts to reach Sam and John Dino by phone, they chose not to comment on this eviction case by the time of publication.
Dino Realty Corp. is familiar with the New York judicial system. In January of 2013, they tried to evict a tenant named Michelle Khan over a total of $4,904 that she allegedly owed in rent. Queens County Civil Court Judge Michael J. Pinckney ultimately ruled in favor of Khan, finding that Dino Realty Corp. failed to act in good faith while Khan tried to repay her debts. Unsatisfied, Dino Realty Corp. appealed the decision to the Queens County Supreme Court, which upheld the original decision but took it a step farther. They believed this was an instance of protecting a tenant against income discrimination and an unnecessary eviction from a rent-stabilized building.
Khan may have ultimately prevailed, but it took almost two years of being dragged through the New York City housing court system to claim victory.
Saleh said the landlord’s attorney argued in court that John Dino filed a lawsuit against the wrong tenant because of a recent stroke that affected his memory. This line of reasoning, essentially, argues it was easier for John to recall a tenant who hasn’t lived in the building since 1999 than the one who’s lived there the past twenty years.
Leslie Tayne, founder and head attorney of the debt solutions firm, Tayne Law Group, said in a phone interview that generally speaking it’s up to a client’s lawyer to do their due diligence. “Sometimes clients don’t provide the correct information to us, so we have to verify it and that’s part of our job. That’s the normal procedure,” explained Tayne.
On Sept. 27th, the judge ruled to vacate the eviction warrant. After a week of being locked out over a name filing error, Saleh has returned to his apartment.
