Justia New York Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

This case arose when petitioner, a tenured assistance principal in the City's public school system, approached a principal at a middle school in the district to request favorable treatment for petitioner's son, a teacher at the middle school. Petitioner subsequently commenced a CPLR 78 proceeding, seeking to prohibit the Board and the City's Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH) from proceeding with petitioner's scheduled administrative trial. The court held that the Board was authorized to enforce the Conflicts of Interest Law, NY City Charter 2600-2607, against a public servant who was subject to discipline under section 3020 and 3020-a of the Education Law. As a result, the lower courts improperly prohibited the Board and OATH from proceeding with the administrative trial against petitioner. View "Matter of Rosenblum v New York City Conflicts of Interest Bd." on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of first degree murder and second degree murder. The principal issues on appeal where whether courtroom seating arrangements wherein court officers stationed themselves directly behind defendant during the course of his trial deprived him of his constitutional right to communicate confidentially with his attorney and prejudicially conveyed to the jury that he was dangerous, whether Supreme Court abused its discretion when it permitted the People under Molineux to introduce certain evidence of defendant's uncharged crimes, and whether the People's evidence elicited at trial exceeded the scope of such ruling. The court concluded that the positioning of the court officers in the case did not infringe upon defendant's constitutional right to counsel or deprive him of a fair trial and defendant's claim as to this issue was without merit. The court also held that Supreme Court exercised its sound discretion in permitting testimony about limited incidents of defendant's uncharged crimes leading to the shootings and the People adhered to the scope of the trial court's Molineux ruling. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "People v Gamble" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his convictions for health care fraud in the fourth degree and grand larceny in the third degree. The primary issue on appeal was the legal sufficiency of the evidence. The court held that defendant's convictions were supported by legally sufficient evidence where defendant knowingly and willfully provided materially false information to Medicaid. The court also held that defendant's speedy trial rights were not violated. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "People v Khan" on Justia Law

In 2007, defendant was indicted for charges related to the sexual assault of his step-granddaughter, Jane. When Jane was 19 years old, she informed police that she had been sexually assaulted by defendant on three occasions in 2002. When Jane was 14 years old, she underwent a medical examination that revealed she was 12 weeks pregnant, which she eventually claimed was a result of consensual, unprotected intercourse with a 14 year old boy in August 2002. At issue was whether the information that Jane disclosed to the police in 2002 was a "report" to the authorities that was sufficient to bar the availability of the tolling provision in CPL 30.10(3)(f) in connection with the indictment against defendant. The court held that the information Jane shared with the police in 2002 did not activate the statutes of limitations under CPL 30.10(3)(f) because she neither identified defendant as the perpetrator nor reported or revealed any of the sex offenses charged in the indictment. Under these facts, the statutes of limitations for the indicted sex crimes did not begin to run until Jane reached 18 years of age in January 2006. Therefore, the charged offenses were not time barred. View "People v Quinto" on Justia Law

This case arose when defendant agreed in three separate contracts to sell three properties to plaintiffs. At issue was whether a buyer in a damages suit like this one must show that it was ready, willing, and able to close the transaction i.e., that but for the seller's repudiation, the transaction could and would have closed. The court held that in a case alleging that a seller has repudiated a contract to sell real property, the buyers must prove that they were ready, willing, and able to close the transaction. Here, the buyers did submit evidence of their financial condition, but that evidence was not conclusive of the issue. Therefore, whether the buyers were ready, willing, and able to close presented an issue of fact and the buyers' motion for summary judgment should have been denied. The court also held that the courts below erred in deciding as a matter of law that the seller repudiated the contracts by transferring the properties in question. The court held, however, that the courts below were correct in denying the seller's cross-motion for summary judgment. View "Pesa v Yoma Dev. Group, Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiff SPCA of Upstate New York is a New York corporation and plaintiff Cathy Cloutier is its executive director. Defendant AWCA is an Ohio not-for-profit corporation and its president, defendant Jean Levitt, was a Vermont resident. Plaintiffs commenced a defamation action after Levitt generated a series of writings addressing the conditions of collies and the treatment being provided by the SPCA. These writings were posted to the AWCA website periodically. At issue was whether plaintiffs established personal jurisdiction over defendants under CPR 302(a)(1), New York's long-arm statute. The court affirmed the order of the Appellate Division where that court determined that, given New York's "narrow approach" to long-arm jurisdiction where defamation cases were concerned, defendants' contacts with the state were insufficient to support a finding of personal jurisdiction. View "SPCA of Upstate N.Y., Inc. v American Working Collie Assn." on Justia Law

Plaintiff, administrator of decedent's estate, brought this negligence and wrongful death action against defendant. At issue was whether the trial court, in awarding preverdict interest, properly discounted wrongful death damages back to the date of decedent's death and awarded interest from the date of death to the date of the verdict. Applying the EPTL 5-4.3 and its predecessor statutes, the court held that prejudgment interest in a wrongful death action was part of the damages and that such interest should run from the date of death to the date of the verdict. Furthermore, it has long been a rule in New York that the damages on a wrongful death action were due on the date of the death of the plaintiff's decedent. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Toledo v Christo" on Justia Law

This case involved a longstanding dispute over who bore the burden of paying the educational costs for the children of St. Basil, a child car institution located within the boundaries of the school district and housed primarily Greek Orthodox children whose parents were unable to care for them due to certain circumstances. The court concluded that the Education Law specified that children living in such institutions were not deemed residents of the school district in which the institution was located purely by reason of their presence in the institution; the issuance of a license to operate a child care institution did not change the residence of the children living there; and there is nothing to suggest that the Legislature intended the local school district to bear the entire financial burden for those children living in a child care institution. Therefore, the court held that a school district was not obligated to provide a tuition-free education to those children determined to be nonresidents of the school district. View "Board of Educ. of the Garrison Union Free School Dist. v Greek Archdiocese Inst. of St. Basil" on Justia Law

Plaintiff sued defendant asserting causes of action for breach of fiduciary duty, gross negligence, and breach of contract where the gravamen of the complaint was that defendant mismanaged the portfolio of an entity whose obligations plaintiff guaranteed. At issue was whether the Martin Act, General Business Law art 23-A, preempted plaintiff's common-law causes of action for breach of fiduciary duty and gross negligence. The court agreed with plaintiff that the Martin Act did not preclude a private litigant from bringing a nonfraud common-law cause of action where the Martin Act did not expressly mention or otherwise contemplate the elimination of common-law claims. View "Assured Guar. (UK) Ltd. v J.P. Morgan Inv. Mgt. Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiff sued defendants after he was injured while engaging in demolition work at an apartment building owned by defendant. Plaintiff claimed violations of Labor Law 200, 240(1), and 241. On appeal, plaintiff challenged the dismissal of his section 240(1) cause of action and the denial of his cross-motion on that claim. The court concluded that it could not say as a matter of law that equipment of the kind enumerated in section 240(1) was not necessary to guard plaintiff from the risk of falling from the top of the dumpster. Consequently, defendants have not demonstrated entitlement to summary judgment. The court agreed, however, that plaintiff's cross-motion for summary judgment was properly denied because genuine issues of fact remained. View "Ortiz v Varsity Holdings, LLC" on Justia Law