Court Opinion

ID: 5725688
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-01-12 16:16:23.114992+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:40:47.541872
License: Public Domain

Carpinello, J. (dissenting).
Because neither the complaint in this matter nor plaintiffs affidavit in opposition to defendant’s motion to dismiss assert the cause of action divined by Supreme Court, I respectfully dissent.
To be sure, a court may “consider affidavits submitted by the plaintiff to remedy any defects in the complaint” on a CPLR 3211 motion to dismiss (Leon v Martinez, 84 NY2d 83, 88 [1994]). Here, however, plaintiff never attempted to amplify the theory of her case by affidavit nor did she proffer an amended complaint to assert a cause of action tangentially alluded to in her lawyer’s correspondence (see e.g. Murphy v American Home Prods. Corp., 58 NY2d 293, 299 [1983]). Instead, confronted with a challenge to the legal sufficiency of her complaint, plaintiff merely repeated that she had been discharged improperly based on a purportedly inapplicable Department of Health regulation. There is no mention in the affidavit to retaliatory discharge. Under these circumstances, it was not Supreme Curt’s obligation to create a theory of liability absent from both the complaint and the affidavit. I would therefore reverse and grant defendant’s motion. Ordered that the order is affirmed, with costs.