N.Y. Rapid Trans. Law § 68
Whenever the owner or any person interested in any property taken or affected in such proceedings or in whose favor any such sum or compensation shall be determined by the final decree of the court is under legal disability or absent from such city, and when the name of the owner or person interested in the property shall not be set forth or mentioned in the final decree, or when the owner or person interested, although named in the decree, cannot upon diligent inquiry be found, or where there are adverse or conflicting claims to the money awarded as compensation, the city shall pay such award into court to be secured, disposed of, invested and paid out as the court shall direct, and such payment shall be as valid and effectual in all respects as if made to the person entitled thereto. And in default of such payment into court, the city shall be and remain liable for such award with lawful interest thereon from the date of the entry of the order granting the application to condemn. Where an award shall be paid to a person not entitled thereto, the person to whom it ought to have been paid may sue for and recover the same, with lawful interest and costs of suit, as so much money had and received to his use by the person to whom the same shall have been so paid. Payment of an award to the person named in the final decree of the court as the owner thereof or person entitled thereto, if not under legal disability, in the absence of notice in writing to the comptroller of adverse claims thereto, shall protect the city.
N.Y. Rapid Trans. Law § 68