HELL'S KITCHEN — A West 45th Street resident let guests staying in his home turn the apartment into a den of drugs, prostitution and even a porn shoot, a lawsuit filed by his landlord claims.
Thomas Tartaglia has hosted a number of "unauthorized guests" in his apartment at 401 W. 45th St., at the corner of Ninth Avenue, since he started renting it for $3,850 a month in June, says the suit filed by the building's owner in Manhattan Supreme Court on Feb. 1.
Tartaglia first violated the terms of his lease — including stipulations that he wouldn’t cause “excessive noise” or engage in “conduct that was deemed objectionable and/or a nuisance” — at the end of September, when a few of his guests forced their way into a vacant apartment in the building, the suit says.
One of the guests then threatened a real estate agent who was showing the unit to a potential renter and tried to keep her from leaving the unit before returning to Tartaglia’s apartment, the suit added.
Police who were called to the building couldn’t get into Tartaglia’s apartment because he’d installed a second lock for which the building owner didn’t have a key, the suit says.
In supporting documents, the owner says Tartaglia claimed he was out of the country at the time and maintained the person who threatened the realtor had “no connection to [his] apartment."
Tartaglia later admitted the person was staying in his apartment and went into the vacant apartment to use the bathroom because his apartment's bathroom was occupied, the filing says.
Less than two months later, on Nov. 10, a tenant in the building told the superintendent that someone had set a fire in a fifth-floor hallway, the suit says.
When the super went to inspect, he saw “third parties” using drugs and “engaging in prostitution” in the hallway before heading into Tartaglia’s apartment, according to the suit.
Several neighbors, meanwhile, have complained about “loud arguments” between Tartaglia and his guests, including “vulgarity, abusive comments, yelling, screaming, banging and throwing of objects,” the suit claims.
At some point, Tartaglia allowed guests to “conduct a commercial photo shoot and/or film which… was pornographic in nature” in his apartment and on the building’s roof terrace, as well as bringing furniture up to the terrace that ended up damaging the roof, the suit says.
The owner wants to keep the tenant from subletting the apartment, advertising it on Airbnb or allowing "third parties" to use it, according to the suit, which is also seeking $300,000 in damages.
Tartaglia couldn’t immediately be reached for comment Monday, and the attorney for the building's owner didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
