Enforcement Problems and Solutions: Short-Term Rental Contracts and Compliance [Includes 1 hour of Ethics]

Dov A. Treiman, Landlord-Tenant Managing Partner | Adam Leitman Bailey, P.C.

Dov A. Treiman is the Landlord-Tenant Managing Partner at Adam Leitman Bailey, P.C., in New York, where he co-manages the firm’s Landlord-Tenant Civil Litigation Practice and is a principal author of most of the standard form leases and related documents in use throughout the New York City area, many of which he has customized for the firm’s clients. A partner at the firm since 2006, he has written more than 80 volumes on landlord-tenant law, and his drafting of appellate briefs, legal documents, and motions has strengthened the firm’s results for its clients. Courts and other legal commentators have repeatedly cited his work as authority.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. Treiman earned his Bachelor’s Degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and his Juris Doctor from St. John’s University School of Law. He also holds certificates from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and from Princeton Theological Seminary, the latter awarded “With Distinction.” He has studied fourteen languages and is strongly conversant in several of them.

• Recognition & Leadership

The State of New York commissioned Mr. Treiman to produce special editions of several of his landlordtenant works for use in chambers by each of the 51 Housing Judges, and LexisNexis retained him to produce its Practical Advice on Residential Landlord Tenant Proceedings in New York. He has been repeatedly designated a Super Lawyer, carries a “Superb” rating on AVVO, and has featured biographies in Who’s Who in American Law, Who’s Who in American Business, and Who’s Who in America.

• Professional Involvement

Mr. Treiman is a highly sought lecturer on landlord-tenant subjects and has been retained by most of the Continuing Legal Education providers in New York State. He chairs the Board of Advisors of the Apartment Law Insider and served as the principal consultant to The New York Times on landlord-tenant matters. He was the Founding Editor of, and a frequent contributor to, Landlord Tenant Monthly, and his articles have appeared extensively in the New York Law Journal and the Landlord-Tenant Practice Reporter. His editorial work includes The Housing Court Reporter (24 volumes) and its Chronological Annotator, Plaintiff-Defendant Tables, and Digest; Treiman’s Commentaries; Treiman’s New York Landlord Tenant Statutes Annotated; Treiman’s Rent Stabilization Code Annotated; Treiman’s Trial Manual; Treiman’s Encyclopedia and Dictionary; Treiman’s Leading Cases; Public Documents of the DHCR; The Loft Board Reporter (18 volumes); The New York City Administrative Law Reporter; and the Landlord Tenant Appellate Reporter (7 volumes).

• Experience

Mr. Treiman spent fifteen years in private practice before devoting his principal time to collecting, editing, writing, and publishing scholarly research materials in landlord-tenant law. The Housing Court Reporter, the most consequential of those works, is the standard reference used by all of the New York City courts and by practitioners of landlord-tenant law to search some 50,000 cases for precedent in appellate briefs, legal documents, and motions. Alongside that scholarship he maintains an active litigation role at the firm, and his form leases and lease riders remain the working documents for much of the New York City rental market. He has also written several books on non-legal topics, both fiction and non-fiction.

Charles W. McMellon, Associate | Adam Leitman Bailey, P.C.

Charles W. McMellon is an Associate at Adam Leitman Bailey, P.C., in New York, where he practices landlord-tenant law with a focus on propertyrelated actions and proceedings in the New York City Civil Court, Housing Part, statutory compliance, and property management challenges. Before entering private practice he served as the Borough Enforcement Attorney for Brooklyn and Staten Island at the New York City Department of Buildings, where he was in charge of criminal summonses, investigation, and enforcement.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. McMellon earned his Juris Doctor from Pace Law School in 2008 and his Bachelor of Science from Boston University in 1994. He was admitted to practice in New York in 2009.

• Professional Involvement

Mr. McMellon is a member of the New York City Bar Association, where he has served on the Housing Court Committee since 2021.

• Experience

Mr. McMellon’s enforcement background at the Department of Buildings — criminal summonses, investigations, and enforcement across two boroughs — sits directly alongside his courtroom work in the Housing Part. Before his government service he spent ten years as in-house counsel to a large New York City non-profit that provides housing and services for people with psychiatric disabilities, where he commenced and litigated hundreds of for-cause holdover and non-payment proceedings, including severe nuisance cases, complex rent-stabilized apartment matters, and the defense of HP Actions. In every representation he works to find successful legal pathways and practical solutions to ownership and operational challenges.

SESSION 1 – Short-Term Rental Contracts and Compliance | Dov Treiman & Charles McMellon | 12:00pm – 1:00pm

This session works through how short-term rentals are defined and prohibited across statutes, local ordinances, leases, and oral agreements, including the threshold question of how long “short term” actually is. It covers income and occupancy tax exposure; building code and zoning issues (sprinklers, signage, door swings, corridor width, emergency lighting, fire safety devices, safes, registration, and permits); warranty of habitability and insurance avoidance where other occupants are present; and lease prohibitions on subletting and on registering an apartment as a short-term rental. Using New York City Administrative Code §§ 26-2101 and 26-3101 as the working example, the speakers examine the “booking service” definition, the tenant registration requirement, the fine of the lesser of $5,000 or triple the income per violation, and enforcement both administratively and in the courts. The session then maps landlord remedies — self-help and its state and local law limitations, eviction proceedings, plenary actions for damages, injunction proceedings, administrative agency complaints, and defending at administrative agencies — and presents sample lease clauses: a prohibition on advertising, an income-belongs-tolandlord clause with a twenty percent liquidated damages component, and three incurable-nuisance triggers, with attention to attorneys’ fees, reimbursement of governmental penalties, indemnification, security deposit forfeiture, and state doctrine on penalties. It closes with why short-term rentals are dangerous for everyone, and more so in a multiple dwelling, illustrated by a sample horror story.

BREAK | 1:00pm – 1:10pm

SESSION 2 – Short-Term Rental Contracts: Legal Ethics | Dov Treiman & Charles McMellon | 1:10pm – 2:10pm

This session maps the ethics of short-term rental enforcement onto the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct. It opens with fees under Rule 1.5 — reasonable fees, the basis of the fee communicated up front, why the speakers reject contingency arrangements given the criminal implications in this area, and the billing practices that survive scrutiny: hourly over flat, no block billing, tenth-of-an-hour increments, and contemporaneous time records. It then turns to communication and conflicts: the Rule 1.4 and Rule 1.2(a) duty to disclose the billing method and the plan for the representation to the client; the Rule 1.7 bar on representing landlord and tenant together, which the speakers treat as a conflict no signed waiver will satisfy before a Disciplinary Board; and the multiple-party conflicts among administrative agencies, landlords, tenants, and subtenants. Confidentiality under Rule 1.6 is distinguished from the attorneyclient privilege, including the body of law under which a claim of “advice of counsel” waives the privilege. Rule 4.3 frames the speakers’ seven duties when dealing with unrepresented parties — identify whom you represent, recommend separate counsel, and never take unfair advantage. The session closes with Rule 1.1 competence across local ordinances, leases, local taxes, and insurance (and when to defer to architects and engineers); Rules 1.2(d) and 8.4 on not encouraging criminal activity through self-help on the landlord side or registration avoidance on the tenant side; and Rule 4.1 truthfulness — don’t gild the lily, and never threaten criminal action on a conditional basis, a flat prohibition under New York Rule 3.4(e).