Justia New York Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Plaintiffs commenced this hybrid declaratory judgment action/article 78 proceeding, seeking a declaration that the implementation of Local Law No. 3-2011 in relation to the November 8, 2011 general election was null and void for lack of compliance with the Nassau County Charter. At issue was whether the metes and bounds descriptions in Local Law No. 3-2011 applied to the 2011 general election or whether they were the first part of a three-step process to take effect in 2013. The court held that Supreme Court properly declared that Local Law No. 3-2011 was in accord with Nassau County Charter 112, but that its implementation was null and void in connection with the November 8, 2011 general election for lack of compliance with Nassau County Charter 113 and 114. Accordingly, the order of the Appellate Division, insofar as appealed from, should be reversed, without costs, and the order and judgment of Supreme Court reinstated. View "Yatauro, et al. v. Mangano, et al." on Justia Law

These six lawsuits involved an accident near Geneseo, New York, where a charter bus carrying members of an Ontario women's hockey team plowed into the rear-end of a tractor-trailer parked on the shoulder of the highway. The charter bus's driver, his employer, and the company that leased the bus were Ontario domiciliaries (collectively, bus defendants), as were all the injured and deceased passengers. The tractor-trailer driver was a Pennsylvania domiciliary, as were his employer and the companies that hired the trailer (collectively, trailer defendants). In a certified question from the Appellate Division, the court was called upon to decide the choice-of-law issue presented by the lawsuits, which were brought to recover damages for wrongful death and/or personal injuries. As a preliminary matter, the court held that the lower courts were not foreclosed from engaging in choice-of-law analysis where CPLR 3016(e) must be read together with CPLR 4511(e). The court concluded that Ontario had weighed the interests of tortfeasors and their victims in cases of catastrophic personal injury, and had elected to safeguard its domiciliaries from large awards for non-pecuniary damages. Therefore, in lawsuits brought in New York by Ontario-domiciled plaintiffs against Ontario-domiciled defendants, the bus defendants in this case, the court held that New York courts should respect Ontario's decision, which differed from but certainly did not offend New York's public policy. The court held, however, that there was no cause to contemplate a jurisdiction other than New York with respect to the trailer defendants where the conduct causing injuries and the injuries themselves occurred in New York. The trailer defendants did not ask the Supreme Court to consider the law of their domicile, Pennsylvania, and they had no contacts whatsoever with Ontario other than the happenstance that plaintiffs and the bus defendants were domiciled there. Accordingly, the orders in these cases should be modified in accordance with this opinion. View "Edwards, et al. v. Erie Coach Lines Co., et al.; Godwin, et al. v. Trentway-Wagar, Inc., et al.; Butler v. Stagecoach Group, PLC, et al.; Cowan, et al. v. Stagecoach Group, PLC, et al.; Davidson v. Coach USA, Inc., et al.; Roach, et al. v. Coach USA, Inc" on Justia Law

Benito Acevedo was convicted of criminal sale of controlled substance in the third degree and possession of a controlled substance in the third degree and sentenced as a predicate felony offender with a prior violent felony to a prison term of six years and three years of post-release supervision. Dionis Collado was convicted of two counts of second degree robbery and was then adjudged a second violent felony offender and sentenced to concurrent eight-year prison terms. At issue was whether a resentencing sought by a defendant to correct an illegally lenient sentence was effective to temporally resituate the sentence and thus alter the underlying conviction's utility as a predicate for enhanced sentence. The court held that the decisive feature in these cases was that the sentencing errors defendants sought to correct by resentencing were errors in their favor. The court also held that resentence was not a device appropriately employed simply to alter a sentencing date and thereby affect the utility of a conviction as a predicate for the imposition of enhanced punishment. Therefore, the Sparber relief defendants obtained was not effective to avoid the penal consequences of reoffending. Accordingly, the judgment of the Appellate Division was reversed and the order of the Supreme Court reinstated. View "People v. Acevedo; People v. Collado" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, companies that acquired Floating Rate Accrual Notes (FRANs), commenced numerous separate actions against Argentina seeking damages for the nation's default on the bonds and the claims were subsequently consolidated. At issue, through certified questions, was whether Argentina's obligation to make biannual interest-only payments to a bondholder continued after maturity or acceleration of the indebtedness, and if so, whether the bondholders were entitled to CPLR 5001 prejudgment interest on payments that were not made as a consequence of the nation's default. The court answered the certified questions in the affirmative and held that the FRANs certificate required the issuer to continue to make biannual interest payments post-maturity while the principal remained unpaid; having concluded that the obligation to make biannual interest payments continued after the bonds matured if principal was not promptly repaid, and that nothing in the bond documents indicated that the payments were to stop in the event of acceleration of the debt, it followed that Argentina's duty to make the payments continued after NML Capital accelerated its $32 million of the debt in February 2005; and based on the court's analysis in Spodek v. Park Prop. Dev. Assoc., the bondholders were entitled to prejudgment interest under CPLR 5001 on the unpaid biannual interest payments that were due, but were not paid, after the loads were either accelerated or matured on the due date. View "NML Capital v. Republic of Argentina" on Justia Law

This case stemmed from a dispute over the status of a negotiated settlement agreement pertaining to New York City's duty to provide mental health services to certain inmates in its jails. At issue was whether the terms of the agreement expired before plaintiffs filed a motion in Supreme Court seeking to extend the City's obligations. Applying the state's traditional principles of contract interpretation, the court held that plaintiffs sought relief prior to termination of the settlement agreement and their motion was therefore timely filed. View "Brad H., et al. v. The City of New York, et al." on Justia Law

Plaintiff, an electrician working on a construction project site, brought a personal injury suit against defendants asserting claims under Labor Law 200, 240(1), and 241(6), and common law negligence. At issue was whether defendants-property owners (property owners) were entitled to common law indemnification from defendant-general contractor (general contractor). The court held that the general contractor's demonstrated lack of actual supervision and/or direction over the work was sufficient to establish that it was not required to indemnify the property owners for bringing about plaintiff's injury. The court also held that the property owner's vicarious liability could not be passed through the general contractor, the non-negligent, vicariously liable general contractor with whom they did not contract. Therefore, the court held that, under the facts and circumstances, the property owners were not entitled to common law indemnification from the general contractor. View "McCarthy, et al. v. Turner Construction, Inc." on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted for a 2003 drug transaction and sentenced to prison. On November 25, 2009 defendant filed an application for resentencing under the 2009 Drug Law Reform Act (DLRA), CPL 440.46. On December 3, 2009, before the application had been ruled on, she was released on parole. At issue was whether defendant was eligible for resentencing because she was not presently in custody. The court held that a prisoner who applied for resentencing before being paroled was not barred from obtaining resentencing after her release where the statute's plain language only stated that an offender must be in custody when he or she applied for resentencing but did not require that custody continue until the application was decided. View "People v. Santiago" on Justia Law

Defendants committed class B felonies involving narcotics and were sentenced to indeterminate prison terms. All defendants were subsequently paroled, violated their parole, and were sent back to prison. After the enactment of the 2009 Drug Law Reform Act (DLRA), CPL 440.46, defendants applied for resentencing. At issue was whether the DLRA provided relief to reincarcerated parole violators. The court held that prisoners who have been paroled, and then reincarcerated for violating their parole, were not for that reason barred from seeking relief under the statute where the statute's plain language stated no such exception. View "People v. Paulin; People v. Pratts; People v. Phillips " on Justia Law

This case stemmed from a dispute between MBIA Insurance Corporation (MBIA) and certain of its policyholders who hold financial guarantee insurance policies. The principal question presented was whether the 2009 restructuring of MBIA and its related subsidiaries and affiliates authorized by the Superintendent of the New York State Insurance Department precluded these policyholders from asserting claims against MBIA under the Debtor and Creditor Law and the common law. The court held that the Superintendent's approval of such restructuring pursuant to its authority under the Insurance Law did not bar the policyholders from bringing such claims. Accordingly, the court held that the order of the Appellate Division should be modified, without costs, in accordance with the opinion. View "ABN AMRO Bank, N.V., et al. v. MBIA Inc., et al." on Justia Law

Claimants in these four cases were convicted of crimes for which they received indeterminate sentences. A statute required that such a sentence include a period of post-release supervision ("PRS"), but in each claimant's case, the sentencing judge failed to pronounce a PRS term. Claimants were nevertheless subjected to PRS, and in three of the four cases, were imprisoned for a PRS violation. They now seek damages from the State, asserting that they were wrongfully made to undergo supervision and confinement. The court held that all of the claims were without merit where the only error in Jonathan Orellanes' case was by the sentencing judge, which was barred by judicial immunity, and where Farrah Donald, Shakira Eanes, and Ismael Ortiz sued for false imprisonment but failed to plead the essential elements. Accordingly, the order of the Appellate Division in each case was affirmed. View "Donald v. State; Eanes v. State; Orellanes v. State; Ortiz v. State" on Justia Law