Sanders v. Winship

• Decision Date: 18 November 1982
• Citation: 456 N.Y.S.2d 720,442 N.E.2d 1231,57 N.Y.2d 391
• Parties: , 442 N.E.2d 1231 Martin SANDERS et al., Appellants, v. Frederick M. WINSHIP et al., Defendants, and Mrs. Frederick M. Winship, Respondent.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Page 720

456 N.Y.S.2d 720

57 N.Y.2d 391, 442 N.E.2d 1231

Martin SANDERS et al., Appellants, v. Frederick M. WINSHIP et al., Defendants and Mrs. Frederick M. Winship, Respondent.

Court of Appeals of New York.

Nov. 18, 1982.

Arthur Richenthal, New York City, for appellants.

Leon Brickman, Brooklyn, for respondent.

OPINION OF THE COURT

FUCHSBERG, Judge.

In a case of first impression, we are called upon to construe section 19-a of the Civil Rights Law, legislation designed to outlaw specified discrimination in the sale of cooperative real estate ownership interests. At issue at this stage of the case is whether the defendant Joanne Winship, sued herein as Mrs. Frederick M. Winship, who with her husband occupies a Manhattan cooperative apartment of which Mr. Winship is the "cooperative shareholder", is herself a "cooperative tenant" within the compass of the statute. Mr. Winship is also president and a director of 417 Park Avenue Corporation, the cooperative entity which bears the address of and owns the building in which the Winship apartment is located.

The statute, as relevant here, reads as follows:

" § 19-a. Prohibition against unreasonable withholding of consent.

"1. No corporation formed for the purpose of the cooperative ownership of real estate within the state shall withhold its consent to the sale or proposed sale of certificates of stock or other evidence of ownership of an interest in such corporation because of the race, creed, national origin, or sex of the purchaser.

"2. For the purpose of this section a 'corporation' shall include the cooperative management, cooperative tenants, cooperative shareholders, or any appointee or successor in interest of a corporation." ^*

The plaintiffs, Martin Sanders and Erika Sanders, husband and wife, bring this suit for compensatory and punitive damages against the corporation, the Winships and the other corporate directors. As set out in some detail i their pleadings, Mr. and Mrs. Sanders, American citizens of Jewish persuasion who formerly resided in Israel, after contracting with a cooperative stockholder for the purchase of an apartment in the building in question as a residence for their children and themselves, as was stipulated in the contract and required by the corporation, submitted to a personal interview at the Winship apartment, where they were interrogated by Mr. and Mrs. Winship and four others identified as members of the board.

The papers go on to assert that, during the course of this meeting, the Winships, directly and indirectly, made repeated references, "derogatory and demeaning in both content and tone", to plaintiffs' religion and to their Israeli background. Shortly thereafter, though all information required for demonstrating the purchaser's financial ability and good character had been furnished, Mr. Sanders was informed, without reason, that consent to the proposed purchase was denied. Plaintiffs' complaint concludes with the charge that, among other things, this rejection was grounded on plaintiffs' creed, was induced at least in part by Mrs. Winship (who, it is claimed, is, in terms of section 19-a, a "cooperative tenant") and was consistent with "a continual course of conduct of defendant corporation, defendant board members and defendant Mrs. Winship over a period of many years of invidious discrimination against members of the Jewish faith and other minorities".

The procedural posture in which the case is here arises from a CPLR 3211 motion made on behalf of Mrs. Winship to dismiss the complaint against her for failure to state a cause of action, most particularly on the legal argument that she was not a "cooperative tenant". Whatever an ultimate trial may disclose as to the truth of the allegations, on such a motion, a court is to take them as true and resolve all inferences which reasonably flow therefrom in favor of the pleader. On this basis, Special Term, of the view that, since Mrs. Winship "occupies the premises with her husband and has a possessory right, whether by license or otherwise, to do so", she was a cooperative tenant, proceeded to deny her motion. Nevertheless, the Appellate Division, in a brief memorandum, reversed, on the law and dismissed the complaint against her. For the reasons which follow, we agree with the result reached by Special Term.

Our analysis may well start with the obvious fact that the statute, expressive of fundamental State policy (see, e.g., N.Y. Const., art. I, § 11) and expressly purposed to combat the specific discrimination quoted above, is to be regarded as remedial in nature and, therefore, liberally construed (McKinney's Cons.Laws of N.Y., Book 1, Statutes, § 341; cf. Executive Law, § 300; 300 Gramatan Ave. Assoc. v. State Div. of Human Rights, 45 N.Y.2d 176, 183, 408 N.Y.S.2d 54, 379 N.E.2d 1183). Nor are we to assume that, in framing such a statute, the Legislature did not act with a consciousness that antidiscrimination edicts all too commonly are circumvented unless they are comprehensive in their application (see Matter of Axel v. Duffy-Mott Co., 47 N.Y.2d 1, 6, 416 N.Y.S.2d 554, 389 N.E.2d 1075; 300 Gramatan Ave. Assoc. v. State Div. of Human Rights, supra; State Div. of Human Rights v. Kilian Mfg. Corp., 35 N.Y.2d 201, 209-210, 360 N.Y.S.2d 603, 318 N.E.2d 770).

Reading the statute in this light, we observe initially that, though it begins by forbidding only the cooperative corporation itself from discriminatorily withholding consent (subd. 1), it goes on to provide an expansive series of definitions of "corporations" to include not only the "cooperative management" through which it acts, which would not be exceptional, but also such categories as "cooperative tenants" and "cooperative stockholders", each of whom normally play no formal managerial, decisional or policy role.

As we have seen, subdivision 1 of section 19-a commands that a cooperative corporation not "withhold its consent" for the proscribed discriminations. Indeed, the withholding of such consent is the prohibition the statute institutes. Since subdivision 2 then goes on to include cooperative tenants and cooperative...