RENT CENTER EAST INC v. 1491 STATE ST REALTY LLC (2026)

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

Calendar Date:  May 26, 2026

Appeal from an order of the Supreme Court (Thomas Buchanan, J.), entered August 12, 2024 in Schenectady County, which, among other things, granted defendant's motion for summary judgment dismissing the complaint.

In 2021, plaintiff, a commercial tenant leasing a storefront in the City of Schenectady, commenced this action sounding in breach of contract and negligence against its landlord, defendant.  According to the complaint, in 2019, plaintiff's store experienced multiple flood occurrences due to a clogged storm drainage system, which caused water to backflow out of the toilet, resulting in damage to the store's floors, walls, ceiling and inventory.  Plaintiff alleged, as relevant here, that defendant breached the parties' lease by failing to adequately maintain or repair the building's storm drainage system and by failing to properly repair the property damage caused by the floods.  Plaintiff also averred that defendant's conduct constituted negligence.

Following joinder of issue and discovery, defendant moved for summary judgment dismissing the complaint, and plaintiff cross-moved for summary judgment on its breach of contract cause of action.  Supreme Court granted defendant's motion and denied the cross-motion, and we now affirm.

On a motion for summary judgment, the movant bears the initial burden to demonstrate “its prima facie entitlement to judgment as a matter of law by presenting sufficient evidence demonstrating the absence of any material questions of fact” (Please Me, LLC v. State of New York, 215 AD3d 1149, 1150 [3d Dept 2023] [internal quotation marks and citations omitted] ).  The burden then “shifts to the party opposing the motion to demonstrate the existence of a material issue of fact” (id. [internal quotation marks and citations omitted];  see generally Alvarez v. Prospect Hosp., 68 N.Y.2d 320, 324 [1986] ).  Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to plaintiff, the nonmovant, and affording that same party every favorable inference (see e.g. Carpenter v. Nigro Cos., Inc., 203 AD3d 1419, 1420–1421 [3d Dept 2022] ), we conclude that defendant satisfied its prima facie burden on its motion for summary judgment.

As relevant here, the parties' lease required the landlord to maintain, among other things, the “storm drainage systems” and “structural portions of the walls,” but required the tenant to maintain the plumbing and “all parts of the [p]remises not required herein to be maintained by [l]andlord.”  In support of its motion for summary judgment, defendant proffered the affidavit of an expert, an engineer specializing in forensic engineering and the analysis of cause of loss.  Based on the expert's inspection of the interior and exterior of the property, and the sewage and stormwater drainage lines, he concluded, with a reasonable degree of engineering certainty, that these lines were entirely distinct such that a backup of stormwater could not have contributed to the flooding, which originated from the plumbing in the bathroom.  Instead, defendant's expert opined that a blockage in the main sewer line, connected to the building's plumbing system, was responsible for the water backflowing into plaintiff's store through the bathroom.  As the terms of the contract provide that the responsibility to maintain the plumbing is plaintiff's, and defendant's expert opined that only the plumbing and not the storm drainage system could have been responsible for the flood, defendant satisfied its initial burden on its motion for summary judgment on so much of the breach of contract claim as alleged that defendant had failed to maintain the storm drainage system.  Additionally, insofar as plaintiff further alleged that defendant breached the lease by failing to properly repair the premises after the flooding, the allegedly defective work plainly falls outside the scope of repair work that defendant is required to undertake pursuant to the terms of the lease.

In opposition, plaintiff failed to raise a material issue of fact.  Critically, plaintiff did not proffer its own expert to challenge the conclusion of defendant's expert but, instead, relied on a statement from defendant's insurance provider stating that the flooding was caused by heavy rain.  However, the insurance claims adjuster who issued this correspondence averred that he was only repeating what plaintiff's employee had told him – that the water started to backflow out of the bathroom plumbing after a period of heavy rain.  The insurance claims adjuster also stated that he had seen no evidence to suggest that heavy rain caused the flooding and never determined otherwise.  Given defendant's uncontested expert opinion that heavy rain could not have had an impact on the bathroom plumbing because the storm drainage system and the bathroom plumbing were entirely distinct, plaintiff has failed to raise a material issue of fact on its breach of contract cause of action.

Finally, we hold that Supreme Court correctly dismissed plaintiff's negligence claim, which, as plaintiff conceded at oral argument, is duplicative of the breach of contract claim.  It is well established that “[a] simple breach of contract claim is not to be considered a tort unless a legal duty independent of the contract itself has been violated, which legal duty must spring from circumstances extraneous to, and not constituting elements of, the contract” (Torok v Moore's Flatwork & Founds., LLC, 106 AD3d 1421, 1422 [3d Dept 2013] [internal quotation marks, ellipsis, brackets and citation omitted];  accord Frontier Ins. Co. v. Merritt & McKenzie, Inc., 159 AD3d 1156, 1158–1159 [3d Dept 2018] ).  Here, plaintiff's negligence claim was based on the same allegations as plaintiff's breach of contract claim, which, as noted, fails under the express terms of the lease.  Therefore, the negligence claim was properly dismissed.  We have considered the parties' remaining contentions and conclude that they either have been rendered academic or otherwise reject them as without merit.

Ceresia, McShan, Mackey and Ryba, JJ., concur.

ORDERED that the order is affirmed, with costs.

Reynolds Fitzgerald, J.P.