Maureen Caffrey, etc., respondent, v North Arrow Abstract & Settlement Services, Inc., et al., defendants, Eric Nelson, appellant.
2015-06114 (Index No. 102525/09)
Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Second Department
February 14, 2018
2018 NY Slip Op 01043
MARK C. DILLON, J.P.; CHERYL E. CHAMBERS, JEFFREY A. COHEN, ANGELA G. IANNACCI, JJ.
Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431. This opinion is uncorrected and subject to revision before publication in the Official Reports.
APPEAL from a judgment of the Supreme Court, Richmond County (Philip G. Minardo, J.), dated March 13, 2015. The judgment, insofar as appealed from, upon a decision dated December 5, 2013, made after a nonjury trial, is in favor of the plaintiff and against the defendant Eric Nelson in the principal sum of $115,000.
Abrams, Fensterman, Fensterman, Eisman, Formato, Ferrera & Wolf, LLP, Brooklyn, NY (Michael A. Coscia of counsel), for appellant.
Crawford, Bringslid, Vander, Neut, LLP, Staten Island, NY (Allyn J. Crawford of counsel),
DILLON, J.P.
OPINION & ORDER
We address two related issues concerning subject matter jurisdiction that have not previously been addressed by our Court. The first is whether a court with subject matter jurisdiction, which pursuant to
I. Facts
This appeal presents an unfortunate and tortured procedural history.
In October 2009, the plaintiff, Maureen Caffrey, individually and as a shareholder of the defendant North Arrow Abstract & Settlement Services, Inc. (hereinafter North Arrow), commenced
The action was referred by the Administrative Judge of Richmond County “for assignment to a Judicial Hearing Officer/Court Attorney Referee to conduct a nonjury trial.” By order dated August 5, 2011, the Supreme Court, rather than assigning the matter to a judicial hearing officer or referee as directed, sua sponte, transferred the action pursuant to
By order dated January 9, 2012, the Civil Court denied the parties’ respective motions for summary judgment. The order was signed by Hon. Orlando Marrazzo, Jr., as “Judge, Civil Court.”
Thereafter, the action was tried without a jury in the Civil Court for 11 nonconsecutive days spanning the course of several months. In a decision dated December 5, 2013, the Civil Court found that Caffrey established her 50% ownership of North Arrow and that Nelson had breached obligations to her, misappropriated funds to himself, and diverted business to another entity which he owned. The Civil Court calculated Caffrey‘s damages at $115,0001. The decision was signed by Judge Marrazzo, in this instance, as “Acting Justice, Supreme Court,” which is the first time in the chronology of events that the term “Acting Justice” appears in the case. On January 17, 2014, a judgment was filed in the Civil Court, Richmond County, in favor of Caffrey and against Nelson in the principal sum of $115,000, plus statutory interest, costs, and disbursements, for a total sum of $192,995.21.
Nelson
During the pendency of Nelson‘s appeal to the Appellate Term, Caffrey moved by order to show cause in the Supreme Court, Richmond County, to retransfer the action from Civil Court to Supreme Court, pursuant to
In an order entered February 25, 2015, the Supreme Court granted Caffrey‘s motion, retransferred the action from the Civil Court to the Supreme Court pursuant to
The parties agree that the initial transfer of the action to the Civil Court for trial pursuant to
II. Judicial Notice Of Trial Judge‘s Status
The record on appeal contains no document conferring upon Civil Court Judge Marrazzo the authority of an Acting Justice of the Supreme Court for this case. Nelson argues in his appellate brief, as he had previously argued at the Appellate Term, that the Civil Court was without subject matter jurisdiction to adjudicate the action and render judgment, since Civil Courts generally cannot hear actions sounding in equity. Nelson further
In response, Caffrey circumvents the issue of the Civil Court‘s purported jurisdictional infirmity to hear by instead arguing that any infirmity was cured by the Supreme Court‘s retransfer of the action to itself under
After oral argument of this appeal, this Court contacted the Office of Court Administration (hereinafter OCA) to inquire whether the authority of an Acting Justice of the Supreme Court had been conferred upon Judge Marrazzo in 2012-2014, the years when the action was tried and decided and when the Civil Court judgment was entered. OCA advised that, pursuant to an Administrative Order of the Chief Administrative Judge dated January 5, 2012, Civil Court Judge Marrazzo had, in fact, been designated as an “Acting Justice of the Supreme Court, to serve in the Supreme Court, Thirteenth Judicial District, Civil Term” (Admin Order of Chief Admin Judge of Cts AO/227/2012). The designation was administratively extended for subsequent relevant years. Thus, when Judge Marrazzo denied the parties’ motions for summary judgment on January 9, 2012, he had already been designated an Acting Justice of the Supreme Court.
As a general rule, the factual review power of the Appellate Divisions is confined to the content of the record compiled before the court of original instance and does not include matter dehors the record (see
In Ptasznik, Justice Albert Rosenblatt, writing then for the Appellate Division, Second Department, cautioned that only certain court documents are eligible for judicial notice—that “prior orders or kindred documents” may be judicially noticed, while unauthenticated or unreliable documents that happen to repose in a court‘s file, such as polygraph test results, are not appropriate for judicial notice (Ptasznik v Schultz, 247 AD2d at 199, citing Matter of Sowa v Looney, 23 NY2d 329; see Matter of Allcity Ins. Co. [Kondak], 66 AD2d 531, 533; People v Singleton, 36 AD2d 725; People ex rel. Bloom v Collins, 277 App Div 21, 23, affd 302 NY 603; cf. Sleasman v Sherwood, 212 AD2d 868, 870).
Nevertheless, a court should not take judicial notice of any court-generated document without affording the parties an opportunity to be heard on whether notice should be taken, and, if so, the significance of its content (see
The determination of whether to judicially notice a court-generated document ultimately rests upon whether the document is reliable, the accuracy and veracity of which cannot be disputed. Court-generated orders from the Chief Administrative Judge, designating a jurist of one court as an acting jurist in another court, satisfy the requisite reliability, accuracy, and veracity as to be uncontestable for judicial notice. Consequently,
III. Retransfer Of The Action To Supreme Court
Nelson argues that, since the Civil Court had concluded the action by the filing of a final judgment, there was no longer any action actually pending for retransfer to the Supreme Court under
The transfer of actions and proceedings between courts is addressed and permitted in
Conversely, actions may be transferred from a court in which an action is pending to a lower court (see
All of the parties in this action correctly acknowledge that in this instance, the Civil Court was without subject matter jurisdiction to entertain the plaintiff‘s causes of action in equity (see
In rare prior instances where, as here, the Supreme Court erroneously transferred an action to a Civil Court that lacked subject matter jurisdiction, this Court and other Appellate Divisions have held that a retransfer to the Supreme Court under
The foregoing analysis, however, does not necessarily address the related question raised by Nelson of whether a
The first and most basic reason the action was still pending is that the Civil Court judgment was rendered in the absence of subject matter jurisdiction. A judgment rendered by a court without subject matter jurisdiction is void as a matter of law (see Manhattan Telecom. Corp. v H & A Locksmith, Inc., 21 NY3d 200, 203; Lacks v Lacks, 41 NY2d 71, 75; Matter of Metropolitan Transp. Auth., 32 AD3d 943, 944-945; ERA Realty Co. v RBS Props., 185 AD2d 871, 872-873). It follows that if the Civil Court judgment is void, then the action was never disposed of and remained pending.
A second and more nuanced reason that Caffrey‘s action had not concluded by the time of its retransfer to the Supreme Court involves the appeal that had been taken to the Appellate Term. Although a judgment had been entered by the Clerk of the Civil Court on January 17, 2014, that judgment was the subject of an appeal still pending in the Appellate Term as of February 25, 2015, the date of the order by which the Supreme Court removed the Civil Court action to itself. The action may therefore be deemed an active and continuing one at the time of its retransfer to Supreme Court (cf. Hart v General Motors Corp., 129 AD2d 179, 187 n 7).
Our holding that the Civil Court action was still viable and pending in order for the Supreme Court to remove it to itself is consistent with cases determined in analogous CPLR contexts. For example, in actions involving the six-month window for re-commencing certain actions pursuant to
IV. The Authority Of An Acting Supreme Court Justice
Caffrey argues in her postargument submission that Judge Marrazzo, upon being designated an Acting Justice of the Supreme Court, possessed the jurisdiction to hear any action, anywhere, that fell within the subject matter jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, citing the
Our State Constitution provides in
The
Decisional authority has recognized that the Chief Administrative Judge is vested with wide discretion when temporarily assigning jurists between courts. In People v Correa, the Court of Appeals upheld the rules of the Chief Judge that established Integrated Domestic Violence Parts (IDV Parts), by which certain misdemeanor cases typically handled in lower criminal courts are transferred to a County Court or Supreme Court for trial with related domestic relations matters, and County Court or Supreme Court justices are designated to hear them (see id. at 229-231). Similarly, the authority of an Administrative Judge of a Judicial District to unilaterally assign 15 related complex matters to a single Justice of the Supreme Court was upheld and found not to be a violation of due process (see Bankers Trust Co. v Braten, 101 Misc 2d 227, 231-232 [Sup Ct, NY County]). The court noted in Bankers Trust that “[o]nly the Administrative Judge, and not any single Justice sitting in Special or Trial Term, has an over-all view of the needs and requirements of the whole court, and the relative availability of individual Justices to make the necessary decision on assignment” (id. at 232). The same reasoning applies to the creation of, and judicial assignments to, specialized parts such as commercial, matrimonial, tax certiorari, medical malpractice, and criminal plea parts.
Recognizing, as we do, that the Chief Administrative Judge may temporarily assign Civil Court judges to the Supreme Court, it logically follows that such discretionary designations may be subject to conditions and restrictions. Here, Administrative Order 227/2012, of which we take judicial notice, and which designated Civil Court Judge Marrazzo as an Acting
We have considered, but reject, the notion that Judge Marrazzo had “in effect” self-transferred the action back to Supreme Court for trial, rendering the trial and judgment jurisdictionally valid. The decision rendered after the trial reflected the Civil Court‘s index number (300061-2011) rather than the original index number of the Supreme Court (102525/09). An “in effect” retransfer at the time of trial is inconsistent with the filing of a posttrial judgment in the Civil Court, and inconsistent with Caffrey‘s later motion to retransfer the action to Supreme Court, which was contested by the parties and decided by the Supreme Court on its merits.
We suspect, giving the Civil Court the credit and good faith it is due, that the instant matter may have been selectively assigned to Judge Marrazzo, recognizing that the plaintiff‘s complaint interposed equitable causes of action and further recognizing that Judge Marrazzo had been granted Acting Supreme Court status. Yet, given the limiting language of that designation in the Administrative Order, we cannot hold that the Administrative Order cured the subject matter jurisdictional infirmity afflicting the action as a result of its erroneous transfer to the Civil Court under
Where subject matter jurisdiction is concerned, courts, including our own, may not cut corners. As a matter of both constitutional adherence and public policy, the Appellate Division must guard against courts acting outside of their subject matter jurisdiction, even if they do so unwittingly, in good faith, or in furtherance of judicial economy. Accordingly, we hold that the duties of an Acting Justice of the Supreme Court directed to matters pending in the Supreme Court operate only as to actions and proceedings pending in that particular court, and not for cases litigated elsewhere. In other words, a judge of the Civil Court with a limited Acting Supreme Court Justice designation has no authority in an action pending at the Civil Court to exceed the nonmonetary subject matter jurisdiction of that court, regardless of whatever more expansive authority he or she may possess for other assignments pending in the Supreme Court.
Further, since the Civil Court was without jurisdiction to try the instant matter, rendering the trial and judgment void, its findings of fact and conclusions of law cannot as a matter of comity, res judicata, law of the case, or otherwise, be recognized by the Supreme Court upon its
In light of the jurisdictional infirmities discussed, Nelson‘s remaining contentions raised on appeal regarding the trial itself have been rendered academic.
Accordingly, the judgment dated March 13, 2015, is reversed insofar as appealed from, on the law, and the matter is remitted to the Supreme Court, Richmond County, for further proceedings consistent herewith.
CHAMBERS, COHEN and IANNACCI, JJ., concur.
ORDERED that the judgment dated March 13, 2015, is reversed insofar as appealed from, on the law, without costs or disbursements, and the matter is remitted to the Supreme Court, Richmond County, for further proceedings consistent herewith.
ENTER:
Aprilanne Agostino
Clerk of the Court