Castle Village Co-op Sues Resident Over Disputed Shower Leak

A dispute over whether a bathroom shower is leaking into the unit below has consumed a Manhattan co-op and one of its residents for three years, with the building now seeking roughly $200,000 in legal fees from the owner, according to court papers reviewed by the New York Post.

The case centers on Castle Village, a cliffside co-op complex in the Hudson Heights section of upper Manhattan, New York City, and resident Guillermina Girardi, who bought her one-bedroom apartment in 2023. Six weeks after she moved in, the downstairs neighbors reported what the managing agent, in an email cited in court filings, described as "a small leak" that "does not seem serious." Within months, management had recharacterized the same situation as "an uninhabitable situation," the filings show.

What does the co-op say happened?

Castle Village's position, laid out by its attorney, Ingrid Manevitz of the firm Seyfarth Shaw, is unambiguous. "There is no requirement that a licensed master plumber be involved with this leak repair," Manevitz wrote in court papers, and separately argued that "the evidence unequivocally shows that there is a leak." The co-op's proposed remedy includes demolishing Girardi's shower pan and rebuilding it, at her expense, as a repair for damage management attributes to water intrusion from her unit into the apartment below. Manevitz and the co-op's management both declined to comment further when contacted by the Post.

What does Girardi say, and what have inspectors found?

Girardi disputes that any leak exists. "There is no leak to repair," she told the Post, adding that "the leak is deliberately fabricated to harass a shareholder." According to the Post's review of the record, ten city inspections have failed to confirm a leak, and no licensed master plumber has ever diagnosed one. Girardi has pointed to that inspection history, along with the absence of a plumber's findings, as the core of her defense against the co-op's repair order and the associated legal bill.

The downstairs neighbors' own account complicates the picture further. Last spring, Girardi and a licensed master plumber she hired went to the apartment below in an attempt to locate the source of the alleged leak and were turned away at the door, the Post reported. Girardi recorded the exchange. In it, according to the recording cited by the Post, the neighbors acknowledged that damage was visible on their bathroom ceiling but told Girardi they did not believe there was an active leak.

Why has a shower-leak question taken three years to resolve?

The timeline laid out in court records shows a dispute that hardened rather than settled as it aged. What began as a routine maintenance complaint in the spring of 2023 — the managing agent's own email called it minor — became, within the same year, a claim serious enough for the co-op to deem the downstairs unit uninhabitable. From there, the matter moved into litigation, where it has remained for three years without a plumber's inspection resolving the central factual question: whether water is actually passing from one unit to another.

That gap between repeated city inspections finding nothing and the co-op's insistence that a leak exists is the crux of the standoff. Neither side has produced, in the material reviewed by the Post, an account from a currently practicing licensed plumber definitively diagnosing an active leak. The co-op maintains such a diagnosis is unnecessary before ordering repairs; Girardi maintains its absence is proof there is nothing to repair.

What is at stake for Girardi and the co-op?

The financial exposure is substantial for an individual shareholder. Beyond the cost of the proposed shower demolition and rebuild, Castle Village is seeking approximately $200,000 in legal fees tied to the litigation, according to court filings cited by the Post. For the co-op, the dispute raises questions about how far a building's board can go in compelling an owner to pay for work the owner disputes is needed, particularly when government inspectors have not corroborated the underlying claim.

What happens next in the case?

The Post's reporting does not indicate a scheduled resolution or ruling date, and both sides' filings suggest the factual dispute over the leak's existence remains unsettled in court. Girardi continues to argue that the inspection record and the lack of plumber diagnosis clear her; the co-op continues to argue that it has sufficient evidence to proceed with repairs and recover its costs. Neither Manevitz nor Castle Village's management offered additional comment when the Post sought one.

For now, the underlying question that triggered the case — whether a shower pan on one floor of a Hudson Heights co-op is sending water into the apartment below — remains exactly where it was when the downstairs neighbors first emailed the building's managing agent in 2023: unresolved, and contested.