Nosy Condo Suit

Subway’s bread may be fresh but it stinks to high heaven, residents of an Upper East Side condo claim.
The condo has filed a $500,000 lawsuit against the downstairs Subway sandwich shop, complaining in court papers that odors from the eatery “are in the condominium building’s lobby, basement, hallways, stairs and even [reach] the resident manager’s office on the 46th floor.”
The odors have also made their way “Into at least one of [the] residential units of the condominium, causing unit owners to be inundated with strong and nauseating food odors.”
The suit seeks a court order to get the restaurant “to stop all baking, heating or cooking of food” as well as money damages for residents who have “suffered property damage” and “physical and emotional injury caused by the odors.”
A lawyer for the Waterford Condominium did not return a call for comment.
The East 93rd Street Subway’s store owner, Tae Hyun Shin, sounded bewildered by the court action, noting the franchise opened Jan. 29.
He said he moved to get a ventilation system installed as soon as the condo passed on a tenant’s complaint about the baking smell.
“I don’t understand what happened. The super came down once or twice, said one of the tenants complained, so I called a venting company,” which finished putting in new vents Feb. 4, said Shin, 47.
“Now they’re suing me for half a million dollars.”
He said the condo also apparently called the Department of Environmental Protection on him. He said the agency inspected his restaurant last week, but left without giving him a summons.
“I just don’t understand the situation,” Shin said.
The suit says the restaurant’s management was “notified on several occasions of the odor condition,” but they “intentionally, willfully and/or negligently failed and refused to take any steps to correct the nuisance.”
It called the slow response to the problem “unreasonable” because “the nuisance condition can be resolved by defendants not cooking, baking or heating food” in the restaurant.
Shin said he was never asked to stop baking, and never got anything in writing from the building. He said he was told that only one of the 250 units had made a complaint about the odors.
“They were so nice to us, and then they sued,” he said, adding he plans to represent himself when the case goes to court today. “I want to know how I caused $500,000 in damages,” he said.

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