In what is believed to be the first appellate decision addressing the retroactivity of the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 as it pertains to rent overcharge claims, a state appeals court has made clear that overcharge claims pending on the act’s enactment date will not be dismissed as time-barred and that the act’s changes to overcharge claims will apply to the pending claims.

In a decision penned by Appellate Division, First Department Justice Rosalyn Richter on behalf of a unanimous panel, the justice wrote that because the state statutes regarding rent overcharge claims and their statute of limitations, as amended by the act, “provide that an overcharge complaint can be brought ‘at any time,’” then the plaintiffs’ pending claims in the case before the panel “are timely.”