NEW YORK CITY-In reporting Thursday’s state Supreme Court ruling that former owner MetLife may be held liable for rent overcharges to thousands of tenants at the massive Peter Cooper Village/Stuyvesant Town multifamily complex, the New York Law Journal quoted attorney Mitchell Posilkin as saying the decision’s impact was “potentially devastating.” Posilkin is general counsel for the Rent Stabilization Association of New York, which was involved in the case as an amicus. He told the NYLJ, sister publication to GlobeSt.com, “There has been wholesale reliance” over the years by the real estate community on city and state housing authorities’ interpretations of the laws governing luxury deregulation of rent-stabilized apartments.

Whether that devastation will come to pass is unclear, although attorney Kevin Smith sees dwindling interest in filing similar class-action suits against owners of multifamily complexes. “It’s becoming clear that this may not be the cash cow that everybody thought,” Smith tells GlobeSt.com.

The lack of clarity in the issues surrounding the Stuy-Town case, which has been active since 2007, works against a clear-cut victory for either side. For litigious tenants inspired by the Stuy-Town case, as well as for attorneys working on the contingency of winning a big judgment against owners, a payday could be a long time coming if it arrives at all.

However, Smith adds that with about half a dozen lawsuits filed since the state’s highest court ruled against Stuy-Town’s current owners this past October, “there is a fair amount of litigation out there.” That includes a suit in which he won a judgment this past Tuesday for the owners of the 415-unit Clermont building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Yet Thursday’s Stuy-Town ruling “may well not be the last word” on MetLife’s obligations, points out Jeff Turkel, an attorney at Rosenberg & Estis who is not involved with the case. He adds, “Just as it’s possible that the New York Court of Appeals may overturn what just happened, so it’s also possible that the legislature may change the rules, limiting liability or at least clarifying what liability is.”

That said, Turkel tells GlobeSt.com, Thursday’s ruling is “certainly not helpful for the real estate industry.” Had the court instead ruled that last year’s Court of Appeals decision—which found that Stuy-Town’s current ownership improperly deregulated thousands of units while receiving J-51 tax benefits—didn’t apply retroactively, “it would’ve eliminated or at least limited a lot of people’s liability. That did not come to pass.”

Nor did a cut-and-dried victory for the tenants. Turkel points out that while pending cases could be affected by the ruling that the liability was retroactive, “there is a four-year statute of limitations on rent overcharges. And when anybody talks about something being retroactive or not retroactive, you then have to figure out ‘from what date to what date?’ A lot of those issues have not yet been decided.”

To Smith, a partner at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, it’s the responsibility of the state’s Division of Housing and Community Renewal to decide many of these kinds of issues. “The average Supreme Court justice has 900 cases” on his or her docket, he says. “Why should he or she have to deal with these rent claims when you have an agency whose sole purpose is to deal with them?”

In defending Clermont York Associates, the Clermont’s ownership, Smith successfully argued that tenants should not bypass the DHCR on their way to filing claims in court. It’s a strategy that other attorneys could use, Smith says, although he adds that on another recent case in which the defense made a similar argument, Nezry v. Haven Avenue Owner LLC, Supreme Court Justice Carol Edmead ruled in July that the tenants’ case could go forward.

“Where we are procedurally is that one judge isn’t bound by another judge’s decision, because they’re not precedential yet,” Smith says. “You could have five judges of equal status render five different decisions. You have to wait for the appellate court to say who’s right and who’s wrong.” The final word on that question, Smith and Turkel agree, is years away.