Case ID: misc_51/html/0067-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      Per Curiam.\n    ", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

James F. Ryan and John Lever, Respondents, v. George Brown, Appellant.
    (Supreme Court, Appellate Term,
    June, 1906.)
    Municipal Courts — Procedure — Motion to vacate, amend or modify judgment.
    A motion to vacate, amend or modify a judgment rendered by a justice of the Municipal Court of the city of New York must be made within five days, and an order, granted upon a motion made nine days after the judgment was rendered, correcting a judgment dismissing the eomplairit by making it a judgment against the defendant for $18.27, will be reversed.
    Appeal by the defendant from a judgment in favor of' the plaintiffs, rendered in the Municipal Court of the city of New York, eleventh district, borough of Manhattan.
    Isaac Josephson, for appellant.
    Respondents filing no brief.
   Per Curiam.

This case was tried and judgment rendered on January 16, 1906, dismissing the complaint with costs. On January 25, .1906, a motion was made to “ correct ” the judgment. This motion came on to he heard on January twenty-ninth and an order was entered which pro-, vided that the judgment of dismissal rendered herein on the 16th day of January, 1906, in favor of the defendant and against the plaintiffs be and the same hereby is corrected by giving and rendering a judgment for the plaintiffs against the defendant for the sum of seventeen dollars .and forty cents with interest amounting to eighty-seven cents, amounting in all to eighteen dollars and twenty-seven cents as conceded due by the defendant on the trial hereof as appears by the stenographer’s minutes.” The only power given a justice of the Municipal Court to “ vacate, amend or modify any judgment ” rendered by him is conferred by section 254 of the Municipal Court Act. A motion to “ correct ” a judgment is simply another way of asking for an amendment or modification of a judgment. Even if a trial justice can, under the guise of a modification of a judgment, entirely change it from being in favor of a party to one against him, the motion for such purpose must be made within the statutory time (five days), which was not done in this case. Buchsbaum v. Feldman, 43 Misc. Rep. 85; Lissner v. Cohen, 49 id. 272.

The order is reversed, with costs.

Present: Gildersleeve, Leventritt and McCall, JJ.

Order reversed, with costs.