A Manhattan attorney and his dentist friend have filed a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court, arguing that their summer vacation was ruined when the owners of their $10,000 Hamptons rental prevented them from lowering the air conditioner by two degrees.
The plaintiffs, Toby Cohen and Jonathan Neman, say not only was their safety threatened during their stay, but they were treated like “squatters” in the “uninhabitable” luxury home—which they retroactively assailed as an illegal rental.
The descent into the gilded battle royal began on July 28, when Neman and Cohen signed a rental agreement for a two-week holiday for themselves and their families in Agnese Melbarde and Edouard Gass’ East Quogue, New York, home. The price would be $10,000 for the 14-day period, running from Aug. 22 to Sept. 5, according to the lawsuit, which was filed Thursday and first obtained by The Daily Beast.
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But, the filing states, the group was “forced to endure continuous discomfort for the duration” of their holiday. When they complained, Melbarde and Gass didn’t rectify the issue, but told their renters to “suck it up and deal,” the suit alleges.
The problem? A thermostat set to 70 degrees instead of 68.
Lawsuits over Hamptons-rentals-gone-wrong are not uncommon among the NYC elite. In 2018, a Manhattan couple filed suit over allegedly faulty air conditioning in their $72,000 Wainscott summer rental, along with what they said was a malfunctioning pool heater and a hot tub that never got hot.
In 2014, portfolio manager Brian Feuer sued Philippe Chow founder Stratis Morfogen after his 2- and 3-year-old children allegedly got sick from mold contamination in Morfogen’s Southampton home. Feuer and his family left the property and relocated a day after moving in, but claimed Morfogen refused to return the $106,000 they had already paid for a three-month rental.
In 2021, Cantor Fitzgerald exec Paul Pion and his wife were sued when they allegedly refused to leave the $5 millon Water Mill home they had been renting for $120,000 a year, according to court filings.
In the case of Neman and Cohen, they were expecting robust central air conditioning, the lawsuit explains. But when they showed up with their wives and children, the group “discovered that the three-bedroom, two-story house… was served by a single, small air-conditioning unit and controlled by a ‘Nest’ thermostat.”
It had been set “to a minimum temperature of 70 degrees Farenheit [sic] and then locked,” preventing the two families from adjusting the A/C, according to the filing. They also claim the unit itself was on the opposite side of the house from the bedrooms, so they “received almost no actual airflow from the barely-functional unit.”
“Plaintiffs, one of whom’s wife is 8 months pregnant, and their children, all of whom are under the age of 8, attempted to endure the uncomfortably warm temperature for several nights but on August 27, 2022, finally requested that Melbarde make a minor adjustment to the temperature to allow a setting of 68 degrees at night to allow Plaintiffs to sleep comfortably,” the suit continues.
Reached on Thursday by The Daily Beast, Cohen claimed Melbarde, a research analyst at Lazard, refused to unlock the thermostat or reduce the temperature below 70 degrees, declaring that previous renters had abused it and run up the electric bill. “She basically said, ‘I’m not doing it. I don’t want to blow out the unit,’” he said. “That’s the point at which I lost my mind.”
Cohen alleged that his “family’s safety was being [put] at risk.” Asked why he and Neman—both of whom live in New York—chose to remain at the rental house at such peril, he said they did ultimately leave “a little bit early.”
In the lawsuit, Neman and Cohen registered additional complaints. Four days after they arrived, they said, “an individual appeared at the Property, with no warning from Melbarde or Gass, and began spraying insecticide in the backyard of the Property.” When they called Melbarde to complain about “someone… spraying toxic chemicals in the backyard,” she advised them to sit inside for an hour or to stay by the pool to avoid the spray, the suit alleges.
“This suggestion, however, was in direct contradiction to that of the individuals spraying, who told Plaintiffs to stay inside for at least two hours, as the chemicals were dangerous to humans,” it states.
Because of this, Neman and Cohen argue that Melbarde and Gass’ “intentional and brazen conduct” was a contractual breach, and didn’t hold up their end of the bargain to provide a “vacation rental.”
“Rather, the situation was more akin to Plaintiffs being treated as squatters that Melbarde and Gass were trying to remove from the Property by making it unlivable, uninhabitable, and unsafe,” their filing says.
Melbarde and Gass, who is a New York City portfolio manager, according to his LinkedIn profile, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Neman referred The Daily Beast’s request for comment to Cohen.
Using the full force of the law to apparently exact additional payback, Neman and Cohen have also accused the defendants of violating the town of Southampton’s municipal code, which the lawsuit claims prohibits leasing a property to more than one family at a time.
“The guests at the Property were not one family as defined by the Code,” the plaintiffs pointed out, referring to themselves.
As a result, they said, they should receive a full refund for their rental, because it would be “inequitable” to let the defendants keep the money from an “illegal” transaction. (Cohen told The Daily Beast he only became aware of the alleged code violation after their stay.)
They also requested that the court compel the town of Southampton to investigate Melbarde and Gass, fine them for illegally renting out the property, enjoin them from leasing it out in the future, and force them to disgorge “all amounts ever paid to them” by other renters.
Cohen and Neman have asked to be reimbursed for their attorneys fees, though Cohen, a lawyer, is the attorney who filed the case. They are also open to “Any further relief this Court deems just and proper.”
