Court Opinion

ID: 9807066
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 19:46:00.314192+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:21:26.450216
License: Public Domain

Friedman, J.P.
(concurring). I concur in the majority’s reversal of the judgment, including the remand to allow defendant Pace Plumbing Corp. to replead its statute of limitations defense in proper form and for further discovery on that issue. The inclusion of the statute of limitations in the middle of a list of 16 different affirmative defenses that Pace purported to “assert[ ] and reserve! ] onto [sic] itself,” in a single one-sentence paragraph in its answer, was plainly inconsistent with the statutory requirement that “[s]eparate causes of action or defenses ... be separately stated and numbered” (CPLR 3014). This manner of pleading failed to give opposing parties the requisite notice that the statute of limitations defense was actually in play in the litigation. I therefore agree with the majority that, upon remand, Pace should have an opportunity to replead the statute of limitations in the form prescribed by CPLR 3014 and, thereafter, the parties should have an opportunity to conduct discovery on that defense.
Notwithstanding my concurrence in the result the majority reaches, I cannot join the majority’s writing, because I disagree *89with its call for the Court of Appeals to “revisit” the question— one not heretofore thought worthy of substantial debate by either legal scholars or the appellate courts of this state — of “whether a conclusory [pleading of the] statute of limitations defense is adequate in all cases.” Notwithstanding that the Court of Appeals expressly held more than 30 years ago that the CPLR does not require the pleading of the statute of limitations to specify “the statutory section relied on or . . . the applicable period of limitations” (Immediate v St. John’s Queens Hosp., 48 NY2d 671, 673 [1979]), the majority suggests a new requirement that an answer pleading the statute of limitations specify the applicable limitation period. The majority bases this suggestion on Official Form 17 promulgated pursuant to CPLR 107 (reproduced at IB Joseph L. Marino, West’s McKinney’s Forms Civil Practice Law and Rules § 4:231 at 91-93 [2011], and at Siegel, NY Prac § 228 at 390 [5th ed 2011]), an illustration of an answer that, while specifying a particular limitation period, contains no other particulars about the defense.1
The majority expresses a concern that “courts and the bar are left to guess whether Immediate is universally applicable, or whether courts should decide which of [the] two standards [Immediate or Official Form 17] applies to a case given its circumstances.” However, any appearance of a conflict between Immediate and Official Form 17 — and I see none — is completely illusory. As the majority itself acknowledges, “Official Form 17 establishes a ceiling, not a floor,” for proper pleading. While CPLR 107 provides that pleadings conforming to “[f]orms adopted pursuant to this section shall be sufficient” (emphasis added), that does not mean that pleadings providing somewhat less information than those in the forms necessarily fall short of what the CPLR requires. In the case of the statute of limitations, Immediate establishes that Official Form 17 provides more information than is necessary.
I fail to see what problem the majority believes would be solved by requiring defendants to specify a period of limitation in pleading a statute of limitations defense. The specification of the applicable limitation period is a legal conclusion that conveys no factual information about the case, and therefore *90does not help the plaintiff in framing discovery requests. Further, contrary to the majority’s assertion, neither does the pleading of a particular limitation period tell the plaintiff the date from which the limitation period began to run, or how to ascertain that date. More fundamentally, to require the defendant to plead the length of the applicable limitation period, like the identification of the statute providing that limitation period, is to require the defendant to advise the plaintiff on the law applicable to the plaintiff’s own cause of action. Why plaintiffs should be entitled to look to their adversaries for such advice is a question the majority does not answer. In my view — and, more importantly, in the view of the Court of Appeals as expressed in Immediate — it should suffice for the defendant, through the answer, to give the plaintiff fair notice that the statute of limitations will be a live issue in the case. Each side can then do its own research, and reach its own conclusions, on which limitation period applies, and the time from which it runs, and proceed to factual discovery relevant to this issue.2
Although the majority denies that it is “suggesting that defendants be required to plead ‘factual particulars’ aside from the period of limitations upon which a statute of limitations defense is based,” at certain points in its writing the majority appears to advocate just that. For example, the majority states that “it is not enough that a defendant’s pleading give plaintiff notice of the transaction or occurrence at issue; it must also be sufficient so as to give a plaintiff notice of the ‘material elements’ of the defense.” Why such notice is needed in the case of a statute of limitations defense is not clear to me. The defense of the statute of limitations necessarily refers back to the causes of action framed by the complaint (the statute or statutes of limitations applicable to which should already be known to counsel who drafted the complaint) and to the very same “transactions, occurrences, or series of transactions or oc*91currences” (CPLR 3013) alleged in the complaint in support of those causes of action. Thus, the pleading of the statute of limitations defense — to which no responsive pleading is required— need not be accompanied by factual particulars to give the court or the other parties notice of the matters at issue; in every case, such notice will already have been given by the complaint.
In this case, the complaint identifies “the transactions, occurrences, or series of transactions or occurrences” (CPLR 3013) underlying the causes of action for negligence and breach of contract against Pace as (1) Pace’s work as a plumbing contractor in the construction of plaintiff’s building at 557 Broadway in Manhattan and (2) the flood that occurred in that building on June 1, 2006, allegedly as a result of the failure of a pipe coupling installed by Pace. A simple, forthright assertion of the statute of limitations defense in Pace’s answer (which I agree Pace failed to make), without any additional factual detail, would have given plaintiff fair notice that a key issue in the action would be the determination of the time as of which its causes of action against Pace accrued and the limitation period began to run. As the Court of Appeals has plainly held (and as any lawyer could determine through a minimal amount of research), that time was the date on which Pace completed its work in the construction of the building (see City School Dist. of City of Newburgh v Stubbins & Assoc., 85 NY2d 535 [1995]). The determination of that date would then be an evidentiary issue to be determined through bills of particulars, discovery and, ultimately, summary judgment motion practice or trial, not through the pleadings. As the late Professor David D. Siegel observed, the disclosure devices of the CPLR “enable the parties to probe their adversaries’ positions more incisively than pleadings ever could” (Siegel, NY Prac § 207 at 356 [5th ed 2011]).
As should be evident from the foregoing, had Pace’s answer plainly asserted (in a separately numbered paragraph, as required by CPLR 3014) that the claims against it were barred by the statute of limitations, the embellishment of that paragraph with additional factual detail would not have given plaintiff notice of any new matter it needed to know before proceeding with the litigation.3 And, in fact, Immediate establishes that such superfluous factual particularity is not *92required for pleading the statute of limitations. The record of Immediate shows that the defendant stated in support of its second affirmative defense nothing more than the following: “That the plaintiffs cause of action is barred by the Statute of Limitations.” Nonetheless, the Court of Appeals rejected the plaintiffs contention that the statute of limitations defense had not been sufficiently pleaded, explaining: “It was sufficient under CPLR 3013 that respondent pleaded the ‘statute of limitations’ as a defense; it was not required to identify the statutory section relied on or to specify the applicable period of limitations” (48 NY2d at 673).
The Court of Appeals’ 35-year-old holding in Immediate— that all a defendant need say in its answer to preserve the statute of limitations defense is to plead, like the Immediate defendant, that the plaintiffs claim “is barred by the statute of limitations,” without setting forth any factual particulars or identifying either the governing statute or the applicable limitation period — has been followed consistently by this Court and by the other two departments of the Appellate Division that have had occasion to consider the requirements for pleading this defense (save, as the majority notes, for one deviating, and now implicitly overruled, 25-year-old precedent in the Second Department). This Court faced the issue most recently in Cadlerock, L.L.C. v Renner (72 AD3d 454 [1st Dept 2010]), where, as revealed by the record, the defendant’s answer said nothing more than the following about the statute of limitations defense: “This action is time-barred by the applicable Statute of Limitations.” Citing Immediate, we held that this undeniably conclusory sentence “sufficiently pleaded [the] statute of limitations affirmative defense” (72 AD3d at 454).
Thirty years before Cadlerock, we reached exactly the same conclusion in Montes v Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co. (78 AD2d 786 [1st Dept 1980]), where, as revealed by the record, the answer pleaded the statute of limitations with this single, factually unadorned sentence: “The cause of action alleged in the complaint herein is time barred by the statute of limitations.” Holding that this pleading was sufficient, we reversed an order dismissing the defense of the statute of limitations, explaining: “In pleading an affirmative defense based upon the Statute of Limitations, it is unnecessary for defendant *93Manufacturers to identify the statutory sections relied upon or to specify the applicable period of limitations (Immediate v St. John’s Queens Hosp., 48 NY2d 671, 673). Therefore, its affirmative defense is properly pleaded” (78 AD2d at 786).
The Second and Third Departments have also followed Immediate in holding sufficient unparticularized and conclusory pleadings of the statute of limitations defense. In Youssef v Triborough Bridge & Tunnel Auth. (24 AD3d 661 [2d Dept 2005]), the paragraph of the defendant’s answer asserting the statute of limitations, besides omitting any factual detail, actually cited the wrong statutory provision. Nonetheless, the Second Department held that the defense had been adequately pleaded and, reversing Supreme Court, granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss the complaint as time-barred. The Youssef court explained:
“We agree with the Authority that it did not waive the statute of limitations defense despite the fact that it didn’t plead the correct statutory provision. The mere statement 'statute of limitations’ was sufficient to raise the defense since a defendant is not required to identify the statutory provision or specify the period of limitations” (id. at 661, citing Immediate).
Further, the Second Department rejected the Youssef plaintiffs’ claim that they had been prejudiced by the answer’s citation of the wrong statute because “the pleaded defense sufficiently provided them with notice of the matters intended to be proved” (id. at 662) — despite the absence of any factual allegations from the paragraph of the answer that asserted the defense.4
The Third Department followed Immediate in DeSanctis v Laudeman (169 AD2d 1026 [3d Dept 1991]), where the defendant pleaded the statute of limitations defense as follows: “That *94the Cause of Action set forth in plaintiff’s complaint, is barred by plaintiff’s failure to commence this action within the Statute of Limitations as prescribed in the CPLR.” The plaintiff, who was suing as the executor of a decedent’s estate, argued that the answer’s incorrect reference to the CPLR, rather than the EPTL, as the source of the applicable limitation period rendered the assertion of the defense a “nullity” and resulted in its waiver. The Third Department rejected this argument, noting, with a citation to Immediate, that “[t]he Court of Appeals has ruled that a simple statement of ‘statute of limitations’ as a defense is sufficient to raise and preserve it” (169 AD2d at 1026). Accordingly, the DeSanctis court held that “the [statute of limitations] issue was properly preserved by defendant” (id. at 1027).
As the majority recognizes, scholarly works on New York procedure have recognized that Immediate establishes that the requirements for the pleading of a statute of limitations defense are minimal and do not include factual detail. In his above-cited treatise on New York civil practice, Professor Siegel wrote: “The Court of Appeals has held that the phrase ‘statute of limitations’ is a sufficient pleading of that defense” (Siegel, New York Prac § 223 at 383 [5th ed 2011], citing Immediate). Similarly, the Practice Commentaries to the CPLR note that, under Immediate, a “terse statement of ‘statute of limitations’ is sufficient to raise and preserve a timeliness defense,” and the particulars relevant to the defense “can be adequately probed in a bill of particulars or through the disclosure devices” (Patrick M. Connors, Practice Commentaries, McKinney’s Cons Laws of NY, Book 7B, CPLR C3018:19). A leading litigation form book advises the bar that, “[a]s a general rule, in pleading an affirmative defense, one should specifically identify the affirmative defense (e.g., statute of limitations or absence of personal jurisdiction or absence of rem jurisdiction), but not the basis for the defense” (1B Joseph L. Marino, West’s McKinney’s Forms Civil Practice Law & Rules § 4:229 at 82 [2011] [emphasis added]), lest the specification of certain bases for the defense be found to have waived unspecified alternatives.
In suggesting that the “conclusory” pleading of the statute of limitations, as approved by the Court of Appeals in Immediate, might sometimes result in “a plaintiff . . . [being] prejudiced,” the majority concedes that it has been unable to locate any support in case law or scholarly commentary for its view that *95the Court of Appeals should reexamine the Immediate holding. Instead of taking this absence of support as an indication that the bench, bar and scholarly community are united in seeing no problem needing to be solved by the imposition of a new pleading requirement, the majority dismisses past discussions of this issue as “havfing] accorded it scant analysis.” As for Immediate, the majority appears to seek to diminish its precedential effect with the remark that “[t]he Immediate Court did not explain its rationale or cite any authority” for its holding on the pleading issue, and professes to “perceive a lack of clarity [under existing law] concerning whether a conclusory [pleading of a] statute of limitations defense is adequate in all cases.”5 The majority proceeds to posit hypothetical cases distinguishable from Immediate — for example, where the time from which the limitation periods begins to run may not be discernable from the face of the complaint — and constructs an argument that a conclusory pleading of the statute of limitations in such cases, without specification of the applicable limitation period, might somehow “prejudice” the plaintiff by “failfing] to provide [the] plaintiff adequate notice under CPLR 3013.” I fail to see any such potential for “prejudice.”
The majority argues that in this case, purportedly unlike Immediate, the date of the action’s accrual cannot be determined from the complaint, and suggests that this means that, here, a conclusory pleading of the statute of limitations will not give the plaintiff notice of the “material elements” of the defense. This overlooks that the material elements of a statute of limitations defense are the same in every case — that a period of time exceeding the applicable limitation period elapsed between the date on which the claim accrued and the date on which the action was commenced. Since the causes of action have been framed by the plaintiff, the plaintiff does not require advice from the defendant concerning the applicable statute of limitations or the criteria for determining the date of accrual. *96Further, the remedy the majority suggests — requiring the defendant to plead the limitation period, or periods, on which the defense relies — will not give the plaintiff the information that is the subject of the majority’s concern. To reiterate, reciting the applicable limitation period — which, as the majority concedes, is the most that could be required consistent with Official Form 17 — would not tell the plaintiff anything about the date from which that period is measured other than that the defendant believes that a period of time longer than the limitation period has elapsed since that date. Nor would pleading of the limitation period inform the plaintiff of the criteria for determining the time at which the cause of action accrued. Again, I see no reason why a plaintiff should be entitled to rely on the defense for advice about legal principles governing the case that should be ascertained through preparatory research before the plaintiff’s lawyer even begins to draft the complaint.
While it is of course true that in certain cases, as here, the complaint will not set forth the particular date on which the claim accrued, I fail to see what problem the majority believes would be solved by putting the onus on the defendant to plead a particular limitation period in its answer. Plainly, the plaintiff will not suffer any prejudice from the omission of this legal conclusion from the answer. In particular, I do not follow the majority’s reasoning when it expresses the worry that a plaintiff may not know how to “tailor discovery” in response to a statute of limitations defense pleaded in conclusory fashion. As previously discussed, the statement of a limitation period does not furnish the plaintiff with any factual information useful for “tailor[ing] discovery.” Moreover, the complaint will in every case, and with respect to every separately pleaded cause of action, identify the “transactions, occurrences, or series of transactions or occurrences” (CPLR 3013) on which the claim is based, so there is no need for the answer to provide additional factual detail in support of a statute of limitations defense for the parties to proceed to discovery on that issue. Where the date from which the limitation period ran cannot be determined from the face of the complaint, the parties will know from the complaint — in every case, and regardless of how many causes of action are asserted — which “transactions, occurrences, or series of transactions or occurrences” require exploration and development, through bills of particulars and the CPLR’s familiar discovery devices, to flesh out the facts relevant to the statute of limitations defense, along with the facts relevant to *97all of the other issues in the litigation.6 To expect litigants to proceed in this routine manner with respect to the statute of limitations defense — which is clearly the teaching of Immediate — is hardly unfair to plaintiffs, contrary to the majority’s concern.
The majority posits the case of a hypothetical plaintiff who “conduct [s] discovery with one period of limitations in mind,” only to learn subsequently that the defense had a different limitation period (the correct one) in mind. In this situation, it would hardly be the fault of the defense that the plaintiff, having been given fair notice that the statute of limitations defense was in play, had litigated the case assuming the applicability of the wrong statute of limitations to its own cause of action. The same applies to a mistake as to the legal criteria for determining the time of the action’s accrual (which mistake, as previously noted, would not necessarily be corrected by identification of the correct limitation period).7
In sum, the new pleading requirement suggested by the majority is a solution in search of a problem or, stated otherwise, an answer to a question that has already been definitively answered by the Court of Appeals. While the majority laments the “obscurity” that it believes to exist as to the standard for pleading the statute of limitations in the absence of “clarification” by the Court of Appeals, the only “obscurity” surrounding this issue has been created by the majority itself through its suggestion of a supposed conflict between Official Form 17, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, Immediate and its progeny. As previously discussed, no such conflict exists. Further, *98the majority’s discussion of the perceived need to “harmonize” Immediate with Official Form 17 is irrelevant to the disposition of this appeal, in which we all agree that, although the pleading of the statute of limitations was defective because it was not “separately stated and numbered” as required by CPLR 3014, the case should be remanded for further proceedings, including factual discovery, on the merits of that defense. Moreover, while the majority denies that it intends to change existing law as established by Immediate, its decision will inevitably lead to the proliferation of motion practice and appeals on the issue of the sufficiency of the pleading of the statute of limitations defense. In the face of the majority’s call for the Court of Appeals to “revisit” Immediate, counsel for plaintiffs may be expected routinely to move to strike the statute of limitations defense, not only for failure to plead a period of limitation, but also for arguably pleading the wrong period, in the hope of preserving the issue for the reconsideration of the Court of Appeals to which the majority looks forward. I fail to see how this development will enhance either the efficiency or the fairness of our civil justice system. Accordingly, I concur in the majority’s result only, and respectfully decline to join in the majority’s writing.
Saxe and Manzanet-Daniels, JJ., concur with Acosta, J.; Friedman, J.P., concurs in a separate opinion in which Sweeny, J., concurs.
Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County, entered October 23, 2013, reversed, on the law, without costs, the complaint reinstated, and the matter remanded for further proceedings in accordance with this decision. Appeal from the order, same court and Justice, entered August 14, 2013, dismissed, without costs, as subsumed in the appeal from the judgment.

. The paragraph of Official Form 17 pleading the statute of limitations states in its entirety: “The cause of action set forth in the complaint did not accrue within six years next before the commencement of this action.”

. Because this is true regardless of the number of causes of action asserted by the plaintiff, I fail to understand why the majority places such emphasis on the possibility that different limitation periods may apply to different causes of action in the same case. It is the plaintiff, not the defendant, who has put those claims, and the facts underlying them, at issue in the first place, and, so far as I know, it is not the defendant’s job to advise the plaintiff which statute of limitations applies to which of the plaintiff’s own claims. Further, where it is possible that different claims accrued at different times, discovery on the different times of accrual, as on other issues, may proceed simultaneously.

. Again, at the risk of repeating the obvious, the facts relevant to the defense would be ascertainable through discovery. Further, plaintiff was not *92entitled to rely on Pace’s answer to direct its attention to the applicable statute of limitations or the criteria for determining when the limitation period began to run.

. As revealed by the record on which Youssef was decided, the answer in that case pleaded the statute of limitations defense as follows: “That plaintiffs) have failed to commence this action within the statute of limitations provided by § 1212 (2) of the Public Authorities Law. Accordingly, the complaint herein should be dismissed as the action is time barred.” As noted by the majority, in a 1990 case, the Second Department had, without taking notice of Immediate, and relying on pre-Immediate authority, dismissed a statute of limitations defense for the answer’s “fail[ure] to set forth the prescribed period or periods of limitation” (Propoco, Inc. v Birnbaum, 157 AD2d 774, 776 [2d Dept 1990], abrogated on other grounds by Butler v Catinella, 58 AD3d 145 [2d Dept 2008]). Even in Propoco, however, the Second Department did not suggest that a statute of limitations defense should be pleaded with factual particularity.

. The majority, while insisting that we can only “speculate]” about the unstated reasoning of Immediate, inconsistently attributes to the body that promulgated Official Form 17 the judgment (entirely unexpressed) that the pleading of the statute of limitations defense should include a statement of the applicable limitation period. In fact, the promulgation of Official Form 17 expresses no such judgment, since the forms promulgated pursuant to CPLR 107 are only illustrative of pleadings that “shall be sufficient,” which does not logically imply that pleadings containing less information are necessarily insufficient. Thus, I repeat that Official Form 17 and Immediate are not in conflict.

. In this case, for example, had the answer contained a simple statement in a separately numbered paragraph that the claims against Pace were barred by the statute of limitations, plaintiff’s counsel would have had fair notice that the date on which Pace completed its work in the building (from which the limitation period ran) would be an issue in the action. Again, there is no reason to require Pace, through its answer, to give plaintiff advice on such easily answered legal questions as the limitation period applicable to plaintiff’s own claims or the criteria for determining the time from which the limitation period ran. While plaintiff legitimately complains of Pace’s defective pleading of the statute of limitations as one item on a catchall laundry list, it is not Pace’s fault that, as the majority notes, plaintiff apparently assumed the applicability to its claim of the wrong limitation period and the wrong time of accrual.

. While the majority correctly points out that it is “the defendant’s burden to plead and prove” a statute of limitations defense, I also note that it is the plaintiff who “bears the burden of proving those facts which will support the application of one of the rules tolling or barring the statute of limitations” (1B NY PJI3d 2:149 at 40 [2015]).