Tenants who lost homes in 2023 Bronx partial building collapse file $10 million lawsuit
NEW YORK — Several tenants who lost their homes in a partial building collapse in the Bronx on Dec. 11, 2023 have filed a lawsuit against the landlord, contractors and the city.
Among those included in the lawsuit are the Department of Buildings, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Koenigsberg Engineering and Arsh Landmark General Construction.
Tenants ask for $10 million in damages after Bronx partial building collapse
The tenants are requesting a jury in Bronx County Supreme Court award them "no less than $10 million" in damages.
"My clients deserve to be made whole for the value of the items, for the emotional distress," attorney Darius Marzec said. "Some of them are older people, retired people. They can't help but cry and be very sad."
The lawsuit blames city agencies for being "negligent in enforcing the building codes ... despite more than 133 HPD violations." They say 58 of those violations, nearly half, were classified as "immediately hazardous."
It also says the landlord didn't do anything to correct the issues.
Earlier this year, we reported the DOB blamed the engineer for wrongly labeling a crucial loadbearing column as decorative, so when workers started chipping into bricks, the whole corner came down like a game of Jenga.
In November, the agency also said the contractor should have flagged the engineer's mistake from the beginning.
The city law department told CBS News New York, "We will review the complaint and respond in the litigation." The engineer and contractor said "no comment." The landlords did not return our messages.
The tenants' lawyer said he expects the defendants to respond by January.
"I ended up losing everything"
One family included in the lawsuit told CBS News New York's Lisa Rozner their cat died in the disaster, and then they were retraumatized by looters and navigating the shelter system.
"Basically, I ended up losing everything, including one of my pets ... His name was Ninja," a tenant named Ivan said.
He said when the corner wall of 1915 Billingsley Terrace crumbled, you could see his bed exposed on the top floor.
"We actually moved out of the shelter about a few months ago," Ivan said. "I'm working two jobs."
Ivan said he had lived in the building for decades.
"A lot of things that we lost honestly cannot be replaced, can't be salvaged. It's very hard," he said.