An OATH default judgment costs 6,250 dollars at the median.

the median penalty of record on a DOB summons decided in default, against 1,250 dollars where the respondent appeared and was still found in violation, September 14, 2023 through September 10, 2026

See what is open on one building.

An OATH default judgment is what the hearing office enters when nobody appears to answer a summons. The case is decided on the inspector's paperwork, and the penalty of record is set with no account from the building. It is the second most common outcome on the docket: 34,971 of the 165,740 DOB matters in our copy of the city record, 21.1%, over summonses issued September 14, 2023 through September 10, 2026. The cost of not appearing is the part the record makes plain and the summons does not. A default carries 6,250 dollars at the median. A matter where the respondent appeared and was still found in violation carries 1,250 dollars. Same kind of summons, 5 times the penalty of record.

How every DOB summons on this record was decided

Each row is a hearing status as the city's own file records it, counted over every matter in our copy. Pending matters have not been heard yet, so they are not an outcome and are excluded from every share below that speaks about decided cases. The median is taken over the matters in that status carrying a penalty of record above zero.

165,740 matters, issued September 14, 2023 through September 10, 2026. A penalty of record is the amount the decision set on the day it was decided, not a running figure and not what the city's books show today. Rows the city's file leaves unclassified are shown as recorded.

What a default costs against what a hearing costs

Of the 134,007 matters that reached a decision, 34,971 were decided in default, 26.1%, and 99,036 were decided with the respondent present, 73.9%. The two groups do not carry the same price. The median penalty of record on a default is 6,250 dollars. On a matter argued and lost it is 1,250 dollars. Appearing and losing is 5 times cheaper at the median than not appearing at all, before any question of whether the charge was sound.

The same asymmetry shows in the total. Defaults are 21.1% of the matters on this docket and 48.6% of its penalty of record: 255,625,569 dollars of 525,697,274 dollars. Close to half of every dollar the hearing office has set on a DOB summons in three years sits on a case nobody turned up to answer.

A defaulted matter is never dismissed

Dismissal is the outcome that ends a summons at no penalty of record, and it happens only where someone appeared. 15,373 matters on this record carry it, 15.5% of the 99,036 decided matters where the respondent was present. Among the 34,971 defaults it happens on none, which is arithmetic rather than a policy: a hearing officer cannot accept a defense nobody offered. That is the whole case for appearing, stated as a rate. Roughly one in six respondents who showed up walked out owing nothing of record, and none who stayed away did. How a housing matter reaches the same end at HPD, which is a different agency and a different process, is on the dismissal guide.

Vacating a default is not the same as appealing

These are two different applications and they go to two different places, which is where most of the confusion on this subject starts. A motion to vacate a default asks the hearing office to undo the decision and give the matter a hearing it never had, on a showing of why nobody appeared and what the defense would be. An appeal asks OATH's Appeals Division to review a decision that came out of a hearing that did take place. A matter decided in default has had no hearing, so the appeal route is not the one open to it.

This site does not file either application, set either deadline, or advise on either. OATH publishes the forms, the time limits and the grounds, and the Department of Buildings publishes what happens to the violation itself once a decision is vacated or upheld. What this page contributes is the number that decides whether the effort is worth it: on this record, the median default carries 6,250 dollars of penalty of record, and the median matter that got a hearing carries 1,250 dollars. How a DOB violation reaches OATH in the first place is the agency page, and checking your own building starts on the city's own sites.

Common questions about OATH default judgments

What this record does not tell you

It does not say what remains to be paid on any matter today. A penalty of record is what a decision set, and payment, vacatur and adjustment all happen after it, on the city's own books rather than in this aggregate. It does not say whether the underlying condition was corrected, which is a separate certification on a separate file. It does not name a building or a respondent, and no figure here is about one. A specific matter should be read on the city's own record, through the summons number, and never inferred from a citywide median.

Aggregates only. No building and no respondent is named on this page. Every figure queried at this deploy from our own copy of the DOB ECB Violations dataset. Source: NYC Open Data. The guides, OATH and ECB explained, the citywide record.