In their respective agreements, each purchaser agreed to purchase a unit for a stated price. The projected first closing date was September 1, 2008. The offering plan identified the commencement date for the first year of operations in the building. The purchase agreements incorporated by reference CRP/Extell’s offering plan. CRP/Extell then began offering condominium units for sale.īetween 20, the forty individuals named as co-respondents in this proceeding entered into purchase agreements with petitioner. On August 11, 2006, petitioner’s plan was accepted for filing by the Attorney General’s Office. The ongoing review process began, sets of revisions were submitted by petitioner’s attorneys and the Attorney General reviewed and commented on such revisions. Thereafter, the Attorney General issued deficiency comments to the sponsor’s outside counsel which is also the escrow agent in this matter, the law firm of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP (hereinafter “Stroock”). The terse and dismissive decision by the First Department reveals nothing about the substance of the underlying dispute- whether or not the sponsor of a residential condominium conversion plan was required to return $16 million in down payments, and accept the cancellation of forty apartment contracts of sale with aggregate purchase prices of more than $110 million, because of what the petitioner-sponsor claimed to be a “scrivener’s error”.ĬRP/Extell submitted its proposed plan to the Attorney General’s Office on November 29, 2005. Indeed collateral estoppel bars petitioner from litigating the claim, as it was fully litigated before and decided by the Attorney General.” (citations omitted) The First Department affirmed the decision of the Court below, based upon CPLR 7803, because “he Attorney General’s determinations were not affected by an error of law or arbitrary and capricious” And the Appellate Division affirmed dismissal of the claim for reformation “as the court properly dismissed the claim on the ground of collateral estoppel. 2012), which had ”denied the petition to annul the determinations of respondent Attorney General, directed the release and return of down payments made by respondent purchasers in connection with purchase agreements for condominium units, and dismissed hybrid CPLR article 78 proceeding/reformation action ” (underscoring added) 2012), the Appellate Division recently, unanimously and summarily affirmed the order and judgment of Supreme Court, 34 Misc. General principles of New York law in this area of the law were formulated in the mid to late nineteenth century (Part I) nuanced and applied to more complicated transactions in the twentieth (Part II) and continue to be followed and applied in the current millennium (Part III). The equitable remedy of reformation to correct a “scrivener’s error” in a contract, agreement or understanding appears to be as old as the common law itself.
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