Recovering a security deposit in NYC small claims court could take more than a year

Each year, thousands of New Yorkers seek justice through the state’s network of small claims courts — from trying to recover security deposits to holding a scammer accountable for ripping them off.

But a new analysis from a nonprofit consumer group finds that filing a lawsuit is just the start of an “excessively long” process that routinely drags on for more than a year.

The New York Public Interest Research Group, or NYPIRG, examined nearly 47,000 small claims court cases filed in the state’s 13 most populous counties, including all five boroughs, between the start of 2022 and March 2024. They found the average span between filing a case and receiving a final resolution is taking far longer in New York City’s understaffed and overloaded courts compared to other parts of the state, with the extreme backlog causing people to give up or discouraging them from pursuing claims in the first place.

”Regular people who need to use small claims court to recover money that they're owed are not getting the justice that they seek because of how long these small claims cases take,” said NYPIRG Consumer Justice Attorney Kyle Giller, who conducted the analysis using data provided by the Office of Court Administration, which oversees small claims courts.

Al Baker, a spokesperson for the courts, said the office is reviewing the information.

The situation was most severe in Queens, where 7,330 cases filed in the review period took an average of more than 14 months to complete, compared to a state average of five-and-a-half months, according to the report. The Bronx's nearly 4,800 cases took an average of more than nine months to resolve, while the roughly 8,500 cases in Brooklyn took about eight-and-a-half months. In Manhattan, the 6,387 lasted an average of seven months and Staten Island’s 1,448 cases took about four-and-a-half months.

The report found wait times were significantly shorter in most other parts of the state, where judges handle a fraction of the caseload and render decisions much more quickly. In Albany and Nassau counties, the few hundred cases examined took less than two months from start to finish, according to the analysis.

The report also found courts were scheduling appearances roughly six months after a person filed their case in some locations. Ulster County and Brooklyn had the longest wait times for a first appearance, followed by Manhattan and the Bronx.

Residents of New York City turn to small claims courts to resolve disputes of less than $10,000. The cap is $5,000 elsewhere in the state. But Giller said the lengthy process discourages them from pursuing the money they may be owed. Small claims courts across the state handled roughly 25,000 cases in 2022, a sharp decrease from the more than 90,000 cases filed in 1997, the report found.

“People are losing faith in the system and they are deterred from filing these cases in the first place, knowing that it's going to take a long time,” Giller said.

The delays hurt everyday New Yorkers and undermine the long-held concept of small claims as the “people’s court, ” Giller said.

The report quotes one man who waited two years to get his first court date. He later settled his lawsuit after seven appearances spanning another year. Another person said they changed their work schedule to attend five different appearances in Brooklyn before finally resolving the case.

Giller said most of the people who contact NYPIRG through its free legal information hotline are asking for help recovering security deposits — a chronic problem for renters in New York detailed in a series of recent Gothamist articles. He said the delays are especially difficult for tenants who have moved out of the city and return for court appearances typically scheduled months after the case is initially filed.

As Gothamist reported, tenants who win their cases can face the additional hurdle of actually getting the landlord to pay them, which can trigger another small claims court process.

Sateesh Nori, an NYU law professor developing an app to help New Yorkers recover their security deposits and navigate the small claims system, said the report shows how grueling the process can be for everyday people.

“They don't have the time to dedicate to this, especially if they’re ordinary folks with jobs and kids,” Nori said “It’s discouraging them from asserting their rights, and that’s the opposite of what the courts are meant for.”

Gothamist contacted three court officials in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens who are familiar with staffing levels but asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the press. They acknowledged the backlog and attributed the slow pace of justice to a staff shortage. One Manhattan court employee referred additional questions to a supervisor, who did not respond to a message.

In the Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island, the state court’s website listed just a single judge assigned in each borough to handle small claims cases each week. The same records show Queens has two judges assigned to small claims cases each week, one during afternoon hours and another in the morning on selected days.

In testimony to state lawmakers on Thursday, New York’s Chief Administrative Judge Joseph Zayas described the caseload facing judges and court staff across the state.

"Unfortunately, too many judges in too many of our courts have crushing inventories that make the timely disposition of cases extremely challenging,” Zayas said. “The only way to address these backlogs and ensure that cases are resolved more efficiently going forward, is to have adequate judicial and nonjudicial staffing.”

The report recommends that the state Legislature direct more money to the court system to fund additional judges, mediators and clerks to staff small claims courts across New York.

But Giller said the solution is not just increased budgets and hiring, adding that individual county and city court leaders have a lot of say over how they use their funding to pay for a variety of divisions, including housing and divorce proceedings. He said the small claims courts are often low down on administrators’ priorities.

Giller said state lawmakers have already addressed similar shortages in family court and other civil court divisions by passing legislation approving the addition of new judges last year.

“If more attention is paid to small claims court, and more funding is provided to this part of the court system that has really been overlooked for a very long time, we can actually make these cases move faster and restore people's faith in the court system,” Giller said.