The owners, citing the law's four-year statute of limitations for challenging rents, offered to cut the rent to $2,496, the base rent it had charged four years earlier.

And since 1983, when New York State's Omnibus Housing Act was passed, a four-year statute of limitations has existed on rent overcharge claims.

However, the ICCA created a four-year statute of limitations.

Although the Overlap Group met for 32 years, a four-year statute of limitations in antitrust cases would probably limit the number of students who could sue for damages, lawyers said.

Sherwin Belkin, a Manhattan lawyer who represents landlords, countered that the four-year statute of limitations on rent-overcharge complaints had been created by the Legislature in the 1997 law.

Perhaps most troubling is Shapiro's sustained impropriety could trigger the NCAA's "willful violations" exception to its four-year statute of limitations.

Blades's allegations will not be the subject of an investigation because they fall beyond the N.C.A.A.'s four-year statute of limitations.

The appeals court agreed and held that because Mr. Carter had waited until Feb. 10, 1995, to file his claim, Florida's four-year statute of limitations had expired.

Finally, Mr. Sokolski said, tenants should keep in mind that there is a four-year statute of limitations for an overcharge claim.

"There is a four-year statute of limitations for rent overcharge complaints," he said, and overcharges from more than four years ago cannot be recovered.