The voluntary payment doctrine has been long applied to prevent tenants from recovering payments made to the landlord which were tendered "voluntarily"to wit, without dispute or inquiryover a lengthy period of time. For example: a tenant tenders payment of real estate taxes to the landlord for over 10 years pursuant to what the tenant later claims to be an erroneous method of calculation, resulting in an overbilling. With this newfound knowledge, the tenant brings suit against the landlord to recover the amounts overpaid. By virtue of the voluntary payment doctrine, under this scenario, the tenant is, in essence, out of luck.1
The voluntary payment doctrine precludes the tenant from recovering those payments which it has voluntarily tendered, in the absence of fraud or mistake of fact. Likewise, as more fully discussed below, under this scenario, where the first overcharge occurred more than six years before the tenant commenced action, the applicable statute of limitations will bar the tenant’s recovery of any of the overpaid sumsyes, even those overpayments made within the six years before commencement of the suit.
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