An OATH default judgment costs 6,250 dollars at the median.

the median penalty set on a DOB summons decided in default, against 1,250 dollars where someone appeared and was still found in violation, summonses issued September 30, 2023 through September 24, 2026

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An OATH default judgment is what the hearing office enters when nobody appears to answer a summons. The case is decided on the inspector's paperwork, and the penalty is set with no account from the building. It is the second most common outcome on the docket: 35,162 of the 166,164 DOB summonses we hold, 21.2%, issued September 30, 2023 through September 24, 2026. The summons does not tell you what staying away costs. The numbers do. A default carries 6,250 dollars at the median. A matter where someone appeared and was still found in violation carries 1,250 dollars. Same kind of summons, 5 times the penalty.

How every DOB summons we hold was decided

Each row is a hearing status in the city's own words, counted over every matter in our copy. Pending matters have not been heard yet, so they are not an outcome, and every share below that speaks about decided cases leaves them out. The median is taken over the matters in each status with a penalty above zero.

166,164 matters, issued September 30, 2023 through September 24, 2026. A penalty here means the amount the decision set on the day it was decided: not a running total, and not what the city's books show today. Matters the city left unclassified appear as No status recorded.

What a default costs against what a hearing costs

Of the 134,345 matters that reached a decision, 35,162 were decided in default, 26.2%, and 99,183 were decided with someone there to answer, 73.8%. The two groups do not get the same penalty. The median on a default is 6,250 dollars. On a matter argued and lost it is 1,250 dollars. Appearing and losing is 5 times cheaper at the median than not appearing at all, before any question of whether the charge was sound.

The totals show the same gap. Defaults are 21.2% of the matters on this docket and 48.6% of its penalties: 257,400,118 dollars of 529,646,027 dollars. Close to half of every dollar the hearing office has set on a DOB summons in three years sits on a case nobody turned up to answer.

A defaulted matter is never dismissed

Dismissal ends a summons with no penalty, and it happens only where someone appeared. 15,361 matters we hold ended that way, 15.5% of the 99,183 decided matters where someone was present. Among the 35,162 defaults it happened on none, which is arithmetic rather than a policy: a hearing officer cannot accept a defense nobody offered. That is the whole case for appearing, stated as a rate. Roughly one in six who showed up walked out with no penalty at all, and nobody who stayed away did. How a housing violation reaches the same end at HPD, which is a different agency and a different process, is on the dismissal guide.

Vacating a default is not the same as appealing

These are two different applications and they go to two different places, which is where most of the confusion on this subject starts. A motion to vacate a default asks the hearing office to undo the decision and give the matter a hearing it never had, on a showing of why nobody appeared and what the defense would be. An appeal asks OATH's Appeals Division to review a decision that came out of a hearing that did take place. A matter decided in default has had no hearing, so the appeal route is not the one open to it.

We do not file either application, set either deadline, or advise on either. OATH publishes the forms, the time limits and the grounds, and the Department of Buildings publishes what happens to the violation itself once a decision is vacated or upheld. What this page adds is the number that decides whether the effort is worth it: the median penalty on a default is 6,250 dollars, and on a matter that got a hearing it is 1,250 dollars. How a DOB violation reaches OATH in the first place is on the agency page, and checking your own building starts on the city's own sites.

Common questions about OATH default judgments

What these numbers do not tell you

They do not say what remains to be paid on any matter today. A penalty is what a decision set, and payment, vacatur and adjustment all happen after it, on the city's own books rather than in this count. They do not say whether the underlying condition was corrected, which is a separate certification on a separate file. They name no building, person or company, and no figure here is about one. Look up a specific matter on OATH's own case search by its summons number, and never infer it from a citywide median.

No building, person or company is named on this page. Every figure comes from our copy of the DOB ECB Violations dataset on NYC Open Data. The guides, OATH and ECB explained, citywide counts.