The Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings is New York City's independent tribunal. When a city agency issues a summons — including every ECB building violation — OATH is where it is answered and decided. Its hearing officers do not work for the agency that wrote the summons, which is the point of the arrangement.
What the hearing decides
Not whether a building is well run, and not what should be repaired. The question is narrower: did the cited violation occur, and if so what penalty follows. A respondent can appear, produce evidence, and contest the charge; they can also show that the condition was corrected, which can reduce a penalty.
The outcomes, and how often each happens
Every ECB summons carries its hearing result in the city's data. The commonest:
| Result | Means | Count |
|---|---|---|
| In violation | The charge was sustained | 679,464 |
| Dismissed | The charge did not survive the hearing | 297,942 |
| Written off | Closed without collection | 243,998 |
| Cured / in violation | Sustained, but the condition was corrected | 214,174 |
| Default | Nobody appeared | 162,858 |
| Stipulation / in violation | Settled on agreed terms | 92,070 |
Roughly one summons in five was dismissed. That is the number to hold on to when reading any violation record: a summons is an allegation until a tribunal decides it.
Default is not the same as guilt
Over 162,000 summonses ended in default — the respondent did not appear, and the penalty was imposed without the case being argued. A default judgement is enforceable, and default penalties are typically higher than what a contested hearing would have produced. But it records an absence, not a finding on the merits, and it can in some circumstances be reopened. If you are reading a building's history, a run of defaults tells you something about how the owner handles city process, which is a different fact from the condition of the building.
Where it appears on a building's record
Each ECB summons carries a hearing_status and a hearing_date. A status of PENDING with a future date means the matter has not been heard yet — nothing has been decided, and the penalty shown is what is charged, not what was upheld. This site shows those fields as the city publishes them rather than collapsing them into a single "violation" count, because the difference between pending, dismissed and sustained is the whole substance of the record.
Curing a violation
Some violations can be cured: correct the condition within a set window, certify it, and the matter resolves on better terms. Over 214,000 records show a cure alongside a sustained charge. It is the reason an owner's fastest move on receiving a summons is usually to fix the thing, not to argue about it.
Sources: NYC Department of Buildings — DOB/ECB Violations (6bgk-3dad), hearing fields. Counts are live totals on the date queried. General information about public records; not legal advice. For advice on answering a summons, consult a lawyer or contact OATH directly.