Case ID: ad3d_39/html/0367-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Kathleen Gonzalez, an Infant, by Her Mother and Natural Guardian, Rita Porto, Appellant, v City of New York et al., Respondents.
    [832 NYS2d 436]
   Order, Supreme Court, New York County (Doris Ling-Cohan, J.), entered March 14, 2006, which denied plaintiffs motion for an order to strike defendants’ answer for allegedly spoliating evidence, unanimously affirmed, without costs.

In this personal injury action, the court properly exercised its discretion in declining to strike defendants’ answer where plaintiff failed to establish that defendants had willfully or contumaciously destroyed records in an effort to frustrate discovery (see Rosen v Corvalon, 309 AD2d 723 [2003]), or that the missing records constituted crucial evidence without which she would be unable to establish a prima facie case (see Tawedros v St. Vincent’s Hosp. of N.Y., 281 AD2d 184 [2001]). Concur—Mazzarelli, J.P., Sullivan, Sweeny, Malone and Kavanagh, JJ.