People v. Chopak
People v. Chopak
Opinion of the Court
Appellant is the president of a corporation which owns a multiple dwelling in Brooklyn containing 16 apartments comprising 87 rooms. She pleaded guilty to an information charging that on November 23, 1959 at 3 o’clock in the afternoon the temperature was several degrees substandard in two rooms of each of two of the apartments. She was fined $200 and 30 days in the workhouse, execution of the 30-day sentence being suspended. She asks that her sentence be annulled on the ground that on the date of the offense no statute was in existence authorizing the sentence which was imposed.
It may well be that reference to section 225 of the Sanitary Code in the statute authorizing punishment would have been adequate if section 131.03 of the Health Code had been, in substance, a re-enactment of section 225 of the Sanitary Code as it existed at the time when former section 102-c of the New York City Criminal Courts Act was enacted. (Cf. G-eneral Construction Law, § 80.) The difficulty in reaching that result stems from the fact that section 131.03 of the Health Code is not a re-enactment of section 225 of the Sanitary Code, as it then was, as applied to this offense. The change increased by three degrees the minimum temperature allowed in any of the rooms in this apartment house. The lowest permissible temperature was raised from 65 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit. That meant that, of the four rooms where the information charges that the temperature was too low on that date, three would have complied with the requirements of section 225 of the Sanitary Code but not of
Thus, at the time charged in the information appellant violated section 131.03 of the Health Code hut not, in any substantial respect, its predecessor section 225 of the Sanitary Code as it stood when section 102-c of the New York City Criminal Courts Act was adopted. Therefore, insofar as this offense is concerned, section 131.03 of the Health Code cannot be regarded as a re-enactment of section 225 of the Sanitary Code so as to render section 102-c of the New York City Criminal Courts Act applicable to the newer section. At the time of the offense there was consequently no statute authorizing the punishment which was meted out to appellant in the Magistrates’ Court. Although appellant pleaded guilty, she could not be punished by a sentence which the Magistrate lacked power to impose.
The judgment of conviction should be reversed, the complaint dismissed and the fine remitted.
Chief Judge Desmond and Judges Dye, Fuld, Froessel, Burke and Foster concur.
Judgment reversed, etc.
The minimum temperature was raised from 65 degrees Fahrenheit to 68 degrees Fahrenheit by an amendment made by the Municipal Board of Health to section 225 of the Sanitary Code subsequent to its implementation by the adoption of section 162-c of the New York City Criminal Courts Act by chapter 278 of the Laws of 1943 and prior to its amendment in 1960.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.