Commercial litigation for the hospitality industry · New York
New York commercial litigation · Est. 2009
Hospitality runs on agreements.
Calder & Voss represents hotels, restaurants, and the owners, operators, franchisees and lenders behind them — in New York’s Commercial Division, in federal court, and in private arbitration.
Most commercial disputes settle. We prepare yours as though it will not.
That preparation is what moves the settlement number. It is also the only thing that helps when the other side decides to try the case.
The firm’s standing instruction
Practice
Six areas account for most of what comes through the door. Each one turns on documents your business already generates — the agreement, the notice, the policy, the payroll record.
Termination and wrongful-termination claims under long-term hotel management agreements, brand-standard defaults, PIP disputes, franchise encroachment, and post-termination liquidated damages. We know how an owner terminates an agency a court will not specifically enforce — and what that decision costs.
Notices to cure answered before the clock runs out, Yellowstone injunctions, percentage-rent and CAM audits, good-guy guaranty enforcement, and holdover and ejectment proceedings over restaurant and hotel-retail space.
Deadlock, freeze-out and judicial dissolution among restaurant-group members and hotel joint-venture partners; books-and-records proceedings; breach of fiduciary duty; and the valuation fights that follow a buy-sell trigger.
First-party property, business-interruption and contingent-BI claims after a fire, a flood, a closure or adjacent construction — through appraisal, and into coverage litigation over period of restoration, civil authority and the duty to defend.
Tip-credit, spread-of-hours, call-in pay and wage-notice claims under the New York Labor Law and the FLSA; collective and class defense across multi-unit operators; grievance arbitration under Hotel Trades Council and 32BJ agreements.
Liquor licensing and disciplinary proceedings, short-term-rental registration enforcement, health and building violations at OATH, and Article 78 review when an agency determination will not survive the record it was built on.
Industries
We do not have a hospitality group. We have a hospitality practice — which means the vocabulary of your business, from RevPAR and the PIP to covers, the union contract and the thirty-day rule, is not something we bill you to learn.
Matters
Six engagements that show the shape of the work. Identities and figures are omitted.
Sup. Ct. N.Y. Cty. Commercial Division
Acted for the owner of a 340-key Midtown hotel in terminating a long-term management agreement and defeating the operator’s motion to enjoin the transition. The court treated the agreement as an agency terminable at will, leaving the operator to a damages claim rather than possession of the house.
Sup. Ct. N.Y. Cty.
Filed and obtained a Yellowstone injunction three days before a notice to cure expired, preserving the leasehold at a Flatiron flagship while an alleged unauthorized-alteration default was litigated to a negotiated cure and a rent credit.
S.D.N.Y.
Recovered policy limits for a boutique hotel that lost 71 keys for nine weeks, defeating the carrier’s period-of-restoration and civil-authority arguments on cross-motions for summary judgment.
E.D.N.Y.
Defended a multi-concept operator against tip-credit, spread-of-hours and wage-notice claims. Conditional certification was denied as to nine of the fourteen locations; the balance resolved on a per-claimant basis without a class.
AAA Commercial Arbitration
Represented a five-property franchisee against its brand over encroachment and post-termination liquidated damages. The panel struck the liquidated-damages clause as an unenforceable penalty and awarded the franchisee its fees.
OATH · Article 78
Vacated six-figure penalties against a serviced-apartment operator by establishing the units’ thirty-day-minimum use under the Multiple Dwelling Law, then defeated the City’s cross-motion on Article 78 review.
Matters are described in general terms, with client identities and figures omitted. Every dispute turns on its own facts, record and forum; nothing above is a prediction or a promise about yours.
Contact
Tell us what has happened and who is on the other side — within the hour if a deadline is running.
A short summary is enough — nothing confidential yet.
We run conflicts first, then call you back with an initial read.
If we act, an engagement letter and a budget come before the work does — flat fees for defined filings, hybrid structures where the matter supports them.
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In the meantime the real routes in are (212) 555-0140 and intake@caldervoss.com.