Court Opinion

ID: 9820866
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 07:38:31.590154+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:38:45.695046
License: Public Domain

Mazzarelli, J.,
concurs in a separate memorandum as follows: I concur, but strictly on constraint of Tannenbaum v City of New York (30 AD3d 357 [1st Dept 2006]). While the dissent’s argument is compelling that the statutory language in General Municipal Law § 50-e (1) (b) and (2) does not require naming individual municipal actors as a condition precedent to commencing an action against them, this Court has already held that it does. There is no discernible difference between the facts presented here and the facts presented in Tannenbaum. Accordingly, I am constrained to affirm.
Richter and Manzanet-Daniels, JJ., dissent in a memorandum by Manzanet-Daniels, J., as follows: The issue in this case is whether the relevant provisions of the General Municipal Law governing the sufficiency of notices of claim oblige a plaintiff to name individual defendants in the notice of claim. I believe that neither the express language of the statute nor our precedent compels this result. I therefore dissent.
Plaintiff alleges that he was falsely arrested on April 30, 2008, at approximately 7:30 p.m. in front of 1459 Wythe Place in the Bronx. He filed a notice of claim against the City and the “New York City Police Department” alleging “[a]ssault, battery, excessive force, police brutality, false imprisonment, false arrest, negligence, abuse of process, violation of Civil Rights, violation of claimant’s Civil Rights under 42 USC Section 1983 and negligent retention and hiring, loss of services, loss of earnings and attorneys’ fees.”
In September 2008, plaintiff commenced the instant action for false arrest, false imprisonment, and malicious prosecution, against the City, the Police Department, and “Police Officer John Doe A/K/A Officer Green and Police Officer John Doe Badge Number 14007.” The complaint was amended to add, inter alia, additional defendants Sergeants Keri Thompson and Natel, and Police Officers John Stollenborg and Ryan Weiss.
In September 2013, defendants moved to dismiss the state law claims against the individual defendants pursuant to CPLR 3211 (a) (7), arguing that the individual defendants were not identified in the notice of claim. The court granted the City’s motion for summary judgment to the extent it sought dismissal of all claims against the individual defendants, and also, sua sponte, dismissed the action as against the City itself on the ground the City could not be held vicariously liable for the ac*608tions of its individual employees/agents (i.e., police officers) once the action was dismissed as against the individual employees.
On appeal, plaintiff argues that the naming of individual officers in the notice of claim is not mandated by the statute. I am compelled to agree.
Section 50-e (2) of the General Municipal Law, governing the contents of the notice of claim, nowhere requires the naming of individual defendants in the notice of claim. The statute requires only the following to be enumerated: (1) the name and address of each claimant and his or her attorney, if any; (2) the nature of the claim; (3) the time, place and manner in which the claim arose; and (4) an itemization of damages or injuries claimed to have been sustained as far as practicable.
Moreover, the section 50-e notice of claim service requirements make plain that direct service of a notice of claim upon a culpable individual municipal actor is not required. General Municipal Law § 50-e (1) (b), explicitly provides that an individual municipal actor need not be served with a notice of claim as a precondition to commencing a subsequent action against such individual actor. The same subsection provides that a municipality need be served with a notice of claim only if the municipality would be obligated to indemnify a claimant for the alleged tortious actions of the individual actor.
Justice Sweeny’s argument that naming of individual actors is required by the statute because the statute dispenses with service upon those actors is circular. One could just as easily make the counterargument that the statute dispenses with service on individual actors because the statute does not require that they be named in the notice of claim.
The Court of Appeals, in construing section 50-e, has stated that the purpose of a notice of claim is to provide the municipality an opportunity to collect sufficient evidence promptly in order to properly assess the merits of a claim (see Brown v City of New York, 95 NY2d 389, 393 [2000]). The test of the sufficiency of a notice of claim is merely “whether it includes information sufficient to enable the city to investigate. Nothing more may be required” (id. [internal quotation marks and citation omitted]).
In determining whether the requirements of General Municipal Law § 50-e have been met, courts should evaluate “whether based on the claimant’s description municipal authorities can locate the place, fix the time and understand the nature of the accident” (id.).
In this case, it is not seriously alleged that the failure to *609name the individual defendants in the notice of claim hampered the investigation of plaintiffs claim or prevented the municipal defendant from ascertaining the time, place and nature of the accident. Indeed, in cases of alleged false arrest, it would appear that the municipal defendant is uniquely positioned to know the facts of any such claim — at a minimum, which officers were on duty and in the vicinity. These officers are employees of the municipal defendant and presumably available for interviews. Plaintiff, the alleged victim, is in no better position to ascertain the identities of the officers alleged to have used excessive force in falsely arresting him. In many cases, the officer filling out the arrest paperwork is not the officer or officers who actually effectuated the arrest, but one who may have later appeared on the scene.
Justice Sweeny’s argument that “John Doe” language in the notice of claim would suffice to put the municipality on notice is difficult to apprehend. “John Doe” language will not enable the municipality to better identify the arresting officers in the unlikely event the City is unaware of their identities. A claim for false arrest, by definition, presupposes that an arrest has been effectuated by one or more members of the department. Having been apprised of the time, place and manner of the claim, the department is in the best position to identify the officers involved.
Justice Sweeny, in reaching his result, relies entirely on the earlier decisions in Cleghorne v City of New York (99 AD3d 443, 446 [1st Dept 2012]) and Tannenbaum v City of New York (30 AD3d 357, 358 [1st Dept 2006]). Cleghorne follows Tannenbaum without discussion (indeed, it cites as authority section 50-e, which imposes no such requirement). The decision in Tannenbaum is devoid of any reasoning whatsoever, and cites as its sole authority a lower court decision in White v Averill Park Cent. School Dist. (195 Misc 2d 409 [Sup Ct, Rensselaer County 2003]). Tannenbaum, moreover, involved not the failure to name individual police officers implicated in a false arrest but the failure to name assistant district attorneys in a notice of claim.
The Third and Fourth Departments have recognized the flaw in Tannenbaum’s reasoning, and the Fourth Department has explicitly overruled its earlier precedent to the extent it adhered to the flawed rationale of Tannenbaum. Our sister courts have reasoned, correctly in my view, that the “underlying purpose of [section 50-e] may be served [i.e., the ability of a municipality to conduct an adequate and timely investigation] without requiring a plaintiff to name the individual agents, of*610fleers or employees in the notice of claim,” expressly rejecting the reasoning of prior cases that purported to have imposed such a requirement (Goodwin v Pretorius, 105 AD3d 207, 216 [4th Dept 2013]; see e.g. Pierce v Hickey, 129 AD3d 1287 [3d Dept 2015]; Bailey v City of New York, 79 F Supp 3d 424, 453 [ED NY 2015]; Chamberlain v City of White Plains, 986 F Supp 2d 363, 397 [SD NY 2013]). We should do the same.
While I understand concurrences’ fidelity to Tannenbaum, we must not be loath to depart from precedent where it cannot be reconciled with the plain meaning and purpose of a statute. The decisions in Tannenbaum and Cleghorne imposed a requirement for notices of claim that went beyond those enumerated by the General Municipal Law. The requirements for notices of claim are in derogation of a plaintiff’s rights and must therefore be strictly construed. Certainly, we ought not to impose judicially a requirement that is nowhere to be found in the statute. It is well settled that “where as here the statute describes the particular situations in which it is to apply, an irrefutable inference must be drawn that what is omitted or not included was intended to be omitted or excluded” (Patrolmen’s Benevolent Assn. of City of N.Y. v City of New York, 41 NY2d 205, 208-209 [1976] [internal quotation marks omitted]).