Franchisee said to sue NY landlord over ratsFranchisee said to sue NY landlord over rats

NEW YORK A Burger King franchisee here has sued a landlord for failing to keep rats from entering the operator’s unit in a landmark building on Fifth Avenue, a local newspaper reported today.

The restaurant was featured in a segment of the television program “Inside Edition” on local restaurants’ recent problems with rats, according to the article in The New York Sun.  The unit closed the next day. Two days later, on March 22, franchisee Powell Foods of 14391 LLC filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court in Manhattan.  The Sun reported that Burger King’s franchisor was also a complainant in the suit, but the assertion could not be confirmed.

The suit alleges that rodents from a shuttered Chinese restaurant next door migrated into the BK unit because the landlord, 401 Fifth LLC, had failed to fill in cracks or take other actions to prevent an infestation.

The Sun story noted that the unit, at 401 Fifth Avenue, had not been docked any points for safety violations during its most recent sanitation inspection.