They should have kept a light burning.

Petitioner-landlord will be getting his rent-stablilized apartment back since he proved, by a preponderance of the evidence, that it was not the tenant's primary residence, in Carmine Limited v. Gordon, which was decided by the First Department on June 14, 2007. The apartment in question -- a 450-square foot, one bedroom walk-up in Greenwich Village -- was first rented in 1978. In 1991, though, tenants also leased a rent-stabilized two-bedroom apartment in Stuyvesant Town, and have been paying rent on both apartments ever since. The court gave short shrift to tenants' argument that,because their marriage was rocky, the husband had moved into the Stuyvesant apartment, while the wife continued to live in the Village apartment. The court noted that, through all these years, there has never been even a separation agreement, much less divorce proceedings, and that the tenants remain very much married. They share a single joint bank account into which the wife's paychecks are deposited directly, and the husband pays all the bills, to include rent on both apartments. The court said that what it found most persuasive was the evidence that there had been negligible use -- and for extended periods no use -- of electricity in the Village apartment for more than a year prior to the commencement of this holdover proceeding.