A Cable Box Inside an Apartment Can Turn Into a Can of Worms

“The first thing to do is to call the cable company and try to get someone with some authority to discuss the situation,” advises Seth Sahr, a lawyer in the Queens firm of Novitt, Sahr & Snow. “They have special engineers who can assess alternative places for that box. And explore common areas throughout the building where they could reinstall the box.”

If it’s not possible to relocate the box from private to public space, the question arises: does the co-op board have the right to give utility crews access to a shareholder’s apartment?

“There are some general provisions in most, if not all, proprietary leases that give the co-op the rights to access a shareholder’s apartment for a variety of different purposes,” says Robert Tierman, a lawyer with the firm Litwin & Tierman. "And this is a situation that would clearly fall under those provisions."

“The access provisions typically say that access is supposed to be with notice, unless it’s an emergency,” adds Sahr. So if the board gives notice, “then the shareholder would have to give access for repairs or modifications.”

In most proprietary leases, that provision is contained in Paragraph 25.

“It’s been around for decades,” Tierman says. “It also requires shareholders to provide a key to the co-op to allow for access in the event they’re not home.”

If the cable company’s engineer determines that there’s a suitable public space in the building where the box could be relocated, who pays for the work?

“Your board might want to approach the cable company and ask them to pay for the cost of moving it,” says Sahr. “They may absorb it, or look to share it, or put it off on the co-op. A good business decision here may be to spend the money or share the cost with the cable company to get that box moved so the co-op doesn’t have to deal with all the side effects.”

These side effects can include messy lawsuits if an apartment is damaged or, say, a diamond ring goes missing while the cable guy is inside the shareholder’s apartment. One way to prevent this is to specify times when repairmen can have access, and then make sure a third party is present when the crew is in the apartment.

“Maybe there’s a neighbor who the shareholder trusts,” says Sahr, “and the shareholder can say they want this person to be with the repairmen. Or the super has to be with them. You can’t just let the utility guy come in and not have somebody stay with him.”