2 days ago
Super Bowl champ Chris Canty in NYC legal battle with tenant
Former star New York Giant defensive lineman Chris Canty has gone on offense — against his Upper West Side tenant.
The Super Bowl champ and co-host of ESPN Radio's 'Unsportsmanlike' has been accused of unnecessary roughness as he tries to oust the last remaining resident of a five-story, $5.2 million townhouse Canty owns, according to court records.
The 6-foot-7-inch, 380-pound defensive end wants to transform the nine-unit West 89th Street building into his own luxury townhouse — but 5-foot-6 data analyst Stuart Kalmenson stands in his way.
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4 Stuart Kalmenson, who has lived in the building for 19 years, is the only tenant left.
Leonardo Munoz
'I had the choice of either getting bullied, or fighting the good fight,' Kalmenson said.
Kalmenson, 59, has lived in his two-bedroom apartment just steps from Central Park for 19 years, paying $2,600 a month rent when Canty, who works out of NYC for ESPN and has a home in Hilton Head, South Carolina, bought the building.
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But his longtime home has become a house of horrors.
Kalmenson has spent more than two years without utilities, made it through the winter without heat or hot water; and lives with floors so rotted and chewed through by mice he's been force 'to 'block off' about one-third of the living room for safety reasons,' he claimed in court filings.
4 Canty has been a sports radio personality since 2021.
Corbis/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
He kept warm with a space heater and washes his clothes in the bathtub, alleged Kalmenson, who told the court the condition of his home was 'truly appalling and unsafe,' records show.
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'He just wants to destroy me,' Kalmenson, who has traded multiple legal blows with Canty, told The Post.
The rest of the tenants moved out as their leases expired, about three months after the 2011 Super Bowl winner bought the building in March 2020, Canty said in court papers.
Around the same time, Kalmenson — who had lost his job during the pandemic — had planned to move into a friend's basement, but the arrangement fell through at the last minute, he said.
After that, he negotiated with Canty's real estate management company and became a month-to-month tenant, invoices provided by Kalmenson showed.
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But by July 2020, Canty filed in housing court to give Kalmenson the boot. The proceeding is ongoing.
Then in November 2020, a construction crew started work, stripping the halls and other units to the studs with Kalmenson and his Spaniel, Charles, inside.
4 Kalmenson, seen here with his dog, Charles, claims he has to avoid parts of his floors because they are so damaged.
Leonardo Munoz
Canty denied wrongdoing.
'Mr. Kalmenson's allegations are without merit,' said Canty's lawyer, William M. Moran.
The former NFL-er was fined $20,000 by the city Buildings Department in 2021 for falsely claiming the building was empty when the work began, and not having a 'tenant protection plan' in place for Kalmenson, according to DOB records.
That same year, Canty began eviction proceedings against Kalmenson, accusing him of overstaying his lease.
At the same time he accused the tenant in a separate Manhattan lawsuit of 'a campaign of intimidation and harassment' against him and of filing 'spurious claims with the Department of Buildings.'
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4 Canty won a Super Bowl with the New York Giants in 2011.
Joseph E. Amaturo
In October 2021, Canty offered Kalmenson $45,000 to move out — but the tenant said he chose to stay, because he'd just been approved for emergency pandemic rental relief which allowed him to stay in his home another year.
The construction stopped in April, after Kalmenson counter-sued Canty in Manhattan Supreme Court.
The city Department of Housing Preservation and Development has also slapped the former lineman with 410 violations since 2022 and sued him twice for the violations — ultimately settling for a total of $8,000, records show.
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Kalmenson insisted in court papers that prior landlords violated the law by treating the building as a co-operative, when it should have been rent stabilized — a move which would have allowed the residents to stay after Canty purchased it.
Canty, who is also being sued by the city and state for allegedly evading more than $1 million in taxes related to his purchase of the property, claims the building is still a co-op and should not be deemed rent stabilized, legal papers show.
'If I'm entitled to a rent stabilized lease. I don't need to get bullied out of my own home by some guy just because he happened to be a football player,' Kalmenson said.
Canty spent 11 years in the NFL as part of the Giants, the Dallas Cowboys and the Baltimore Ravens before retiring in 2015. He began working in radio in 2021, when he joined 98.7 FM's DiPietro, Canty & Rothenberg weekday morning show. A rep for Canty didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
