Cornerstone Community Fed. Credit Union v Mukasakindi

[*1] Cornerstone Community Fed. Credit Union v Mukasakindi 2023 NY Slip Op 50663(U) Decided on July 5, 2023 City Court Of Buffalo, Erie County Town, J. Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431. This opinion is uncorrected and will not be published in the printed Official Reports.

Decided on July 5, 2023
City Court of Buffalo, Erie County

Cornerstone Community Federal Credit Union, Plaintiff,

against

Helen Mukasakindi, Defendant.



Index No. 11692/10


William Ilecki, Esq., of counsel
Ilecki Law, LLP
for the Plaintiff Cornerstone Community Federal Credit Union

Michael P. Sullivan Esq., of counsel
Gibson, McAskill & Crosby, LLP
for the Defendant Helen Mukasakindi Rebecca L. Town, J.

In the instant motion before this Court, Plaintiff Cornerstone Community Federal Credit Union (hereinafter, "Plaintiff") moves to vacate the Order of Dismissal in this action pursuant to CPLR 3215 (c). The underlying action was one that rests upon a theory in contract, which was properly and timely commenced with the filing of a Summons and Complaint with the Clerk of this Court on October 28, 2010. Defendant Helen Mukasakindi (hereinafter, "Defendant") served what appears to be an unfiled answer on November 11, 2010. One year and one month later, the entire action was dismissed by this court (hereinafter, the "Order of Dismissal") on December 19, 2011.

A significant period of time then elapses between the time the Order of Dismissal was entered and the date that Plaintiff filed the instant vacatur motion on March 15, 2023; precisely eleven years, two months, and twenty-five days constitute such expanse of time. During that significant time period, neither the Plaintiff nor the Defendant filed any pleading in the dismissed case.

This Court then dismissed this action on December 19, 2011. On March 15, 2023, Plaintiff served the instant CPLR 3215 (c) motion vacating the Order of Dismissal issued by this Court and restoring this action to the calendar. This Court must now address (i) whether Plaintiff's motion is properly before this Court as a CPLR 3215 (c) motion; (ii) whether Plaintiff [*2]has any statutory or equitable grounds for the requested relief of vacatur; and (iii) whether Plaintiff's motion was untimely made.

In reaching a determination on the Plaintiff's instant motion, the Court considers the following papers: Plaintiff's Notice of Motion; Plaintiff's Affirmation in support of its motion, with exhibits; Defendant's Affirmation in Opposition, with exhibits; together with all proceedings held herein.

DISCUSSION

I

CONVERSION OF THE INSTANT MOTION TO A CPLR 5015 MOTION

At the outset, the Plaintiff relies on CPLR 3215 (c), as the vehicle to bring its vacatur motion, but the requested relief is properly covered under CPLR 5015 (a) or under the inherent powers of the court doctrine: Here, the Plaintiff seeks leave to vacate the December 19, 2011 Order of Dismissal and restore this contract action to the Court's regular calendar. Thus, Plaintiff expressly seeks relief from a judgment or order which is governed by CPLR 5015 (a), not CPLR 3215 (c) which merely covers "default judgments not taken within one year." This is obvious from the plain and unambiguous language of CPLR 3215 (c) which reads, in relevant part:

"Default not entered within one year. If the plaintiff fails to take proceedings for the entry of judgment within one year after the default, the court shall not enter judgment but shall dismiss the complaint as abandoned, without costs, upon its own initiative or on motion, unless sufficient cause is shown why the complaint should not be dismissed. A motion by the defendant under this subdivision does not constitute an appearance in the action. (CPLR 3215 [c].)

By contrast, CPLR 5015 (a), which is titled "Relief from Judgment or Order, reads in relevant part as follows:

(a) On motion.The court which rendered a judgment or order may relieve a party from it upon such terms as may be just, on motion of any interested person with such notice as the court may direct, upon the ground of:1. excusable default, if such motion is made within one year after service of a copy of the judgment or order with written notice of its entry upon the moving party, or, if the moving party has entered the judgment or order, within one year after such entry; or2. newly-discovered evidence which, if introduced at the trial, would probably have produced a different result and which could not have been discovered in time to move for a new trial under section 4404; or3. fraud, misrepresentation, or other misconduct of an adverse party; or4. lack of jurisdiction to render the judgment or order; or5. reversal, modification or vacatur of a prior judgment or order upon which it is based. (CPLR 5015 [a].)

Plaintiff's motion here is seeking the exact type of relief for which CPLR 5015 (a) provides the operative legal mechanics to arrive at the Plaintiff's conclusion, yet fails to plead it as such. Additionally, Plaintiff could have requested that this Court invoke the inherent powers of the court doctrine which allows for vacatur in the interests of justice upon additional grounds not enumerated in CPLR 5015 (a) that the motion court deems just and proper. (Lanc v Donnelly, 184 AD2d 840 [3d Dept 1992] [court had inherent power to open its own judgment].)

Therefore, Plaintiff's instant motion is not properly before this Court as being made pursuant to CPLR 3215 (c). New York's longstanding policy of resolving legal disputes on their merits rather than merely disposing of inartfully drafted pleadings such as the Plaintiff's instant motion on technical defects will prevail here, however. (see Leon v Martinez, 84 NY2d 83 [1994] ["In light of these principles, we agree with the majority at the Appellate Division that the instant complaint and supporting affidavit, although inartfully drafted, adequately alleged for pleading survival purposes that the instrument prepared by assignment to plaintiffs of interests in the future settlement."].) For the foregoing reasons, this Court converts the Plaintiff's CPLR 3215 (c) motion to a motion made pursuant to CPLR 5015 (a) or pursuant to the inherent powers of the court doctrine and proceeds to address the Plaintiff's underlying substantive application for vacatur of the December 19, 2011 Order of Dismissal.

II

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE RULE OF
LAW AND THE OPERATIVE PRINCIPLES BEHIND NEW YORK'S
STATUTORY REQUIREMENTS FOR A MOTION TO VACATE

James Madison, the father of our Constitution, wrote "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place oblige it to control itself." (James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 51 [1788].) Madison's timeless work of legal theory strikes directly at the heart of what our constitutional framework is supposed to guarantee to every person on the federal and state level: the rule of law. At its core, the rule of law demands:

"that people in positions of authority should exercise their power within a constraining framework of well-established public norms rather than in an arbitrary, ad hoc, or purely discretionary manner on the basis of their own preferences or ideology. It insists that the government should operate within a framework of law in everything it does, and that it should be accountable through law when there is a suggestion of unauthorized action by those in power. (Jeremy Waldron, The Rule of Law, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy available at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rule-of-law/[First Published June 22, 2016].)

The view that the rule of law exists an ideal standard against which to measure the conduct, administration, and inherent justice found in courts dates back at least to Aristotle, who observed that "laws are made after long consideration, whereas decisions in the courts are given at short notice, which makes it hard for those who try the case to satisfy the claims of justice. far [*3]as Aristotle. (Aristotle, The Rhetoric § 1354[b] [c. 350 B.C.).) Here, Aristotle was recognizing that although general rules had to be focused through the insight and wisdom of judges, the general desirability of the rule of law is paramount to a functioning legal system. Expanding on more than 2,300 years of scholarship that followed Aristotle, Lon Fuller observed certain formal procedural characteristics essential for the rule of law, which include generality, publicity, prospectivity, intelligibility, consistency, practicability, stability, and congruence. (Lon Fuller, The Morality of Law [1964].)

Important for this decision, particularly, is the rule of law's requirement of stability. It is essential to any functioning and just legal system that such system strike the appropriate balance between the ability to correct judgments and orders that were issued in error or contrary to the precepts of substantial justice while still ensuring that judgments and orders are given the full effect and force of law so as to not merely remain in force at the mere whim of a particular jurist. After all, for any legal system to ensure its legitimacy, it must provide society with the assurances of finality and predictability of its judgments and orders. Similarly, a legal system must be capable of providing a method to correct judgments and orders that result from errors or further meaningful injustices. (10 Weinstein-Korn-Miller, NY Civ. Prac., par. 5015.00 [citing Moore & Rogers, Federal Relief from Civil Judgments, 55 Yale L.J. 623 [1946].)

New York law strikes that balance via CPLR 5015 et. seq. and its inherent powers of the court doctrine. The ability of litigants to seek relief from judgments or orders, however, is conditioned that such vacatur motion is made to the court within a reasonable period of time. Even if a litigant has a meritorious argument for relief from a judgment or order, New York courts will not address the motion for vacatur on its merits if the motion is not made within a reasonable amount of time, instead denying such a motion on the policy grounds of favoring the granting of finality to judgments and orders. (see Matter of Shah v NY State Off. Of Mental Health, 199 AD3d 955 [2d Dept 2021].) The refusal to entertain a motion for relief from judgment or order after the expiry of a reasonable period of time furthers the compelling interest of granting finality to judgments or orders and, in doing so, enshrines the important policy purposes of maintaining legitimacy, stability, and predictability of outcomes in our legal system.

For the reasons more fully set forth below, this Court cannot separate from its analysis the simple fact that more than eleven years have elapsed between the entry of the Order of Dismissal and the filing of the Plaintiff's instant motion; during that time, Plaintiff has failed to take any action whatsoever in this Court on this particular case. .

III

LEGAL STANDARD FOR RELIEF FROM JUDGMENTS OR ORDERS

Under New York law, relief from a judgment or order is always addressed to the trial court's discretion; appeals from denial of vacatur are always reviewed for abuse of discretion. (see De La Barrera v Handler, 290 AD2d 476 [2d Dept 2002] [the court appropriately denied the defendant's CPLR 5015 motion to vacate a default judgment where the motion, made more than one year after entry of the default judgment was untimely and lacked any support for the assertions that the defendant did not receive actual notice of the summons in time to defend or a reasonable excuse for the failure to respond to numerous notices of default].) According to the Appellate Division, in deciding whether to exercise its discretionary power to vacate a judgment, [*4]a "court should consider the facts of a particular case, the equities affecting each party and others affected by the judgment or order, and the grounds for the requested relief." (Nash v Port Auth. Of NY & N.J., 22 NY3rd 220, 223 [2013] [quoting 10 Weinstein-Korn-Miller, NY Civ Prac 5015.03; accord Reverse Mtge. Solutions, Inc. v Lawrence, 200 AD3d 1146, 1148 [2021].)

a. Facts of the instant case

The facts of this case involve a simple action in contract. This Court dismissed the instant action on December 19, 2011 and has heard nothing from the Plaintiff until more than eleven years thereafter.

b. Equities affecting each party

In the case at bar, this Court must weigh the equities of granting the Plaintiff's motion to vacate an Order of dismissal issued more than a decade ago against a Defendant who is prejudiced by the passage of time and expiry of file retention requirements of her own counsel. Plaintiff could have acted at any time after the Order of Dismissal was entered with the Clerk of this Court, but has only chosen to act eleven years after this action was dismissed. The Defendant is unreasonably prejudiced by the Plaintiff's extreme delay, and this Court finds that the balance of equities strongly tips in the Defendant's favor.

c. Grounds for the Plaintiff's requested relief are virtually nonexistent

Under New York law, there exist five statutory grounds plus common law equitable ground for vacatur of any judgment or order. The five statutory grounds include: (i) excusable default; (ii) newly discovered evidence; (iii) fraud or misconduct of an adverse party; (iv) lack of jurisdiction; and (v) reversal, modification, or vacatur of a prior order or judgment. (CPLR 5015 [a].) The inherent powers doctrine, of course, provides courts with an additional vehicle to vacate judgments or orders for reasons not enumerated in CPLR 5015..

The Plaintiff's instant motion does not offer a scintilla of evidence or even one articulable fact that an excusable default or act of fraud or misconduct on part of the Defendant occurred, nor is there any newly discovered evidence warranting vacatur. No new evidence over the past eleven years has come forward indicating that vacatur should be granted; nor has the Plaintiff asserted a jurisdictional challenge to the Order of Dismissal. The record clearly reflects that no other reversal, modification, or vacatur of a prior judgment or order has issued in this case. Thus, all statutory vehicles to vacatur of this Court's Order of Dismissal are wholly inoperative. This Court turns now to whether vacatur should be granted under the inherent powers of the court doctrine.

Under the inherent powers of the court doctrine, a New York trial court has an inherent common law right to set aside its own judgments or orders in the interests of justice. For the reasons set forth in the next section, the interests of justice mandate denial of the Plaintiff's instant motion, due to the Plaintiff's neglect in making this motion within a reasonable period of time.

[*5]IV

THE INSTANT MOTION MUST BE DENIED ON THE INDEPENDENT
BASIS THAT IT WAS NOT BROUGHT WITHIN A REASONABLE TIME

Viewed through any lens, the Plaintiff has failed to satisfy the basic requirement of bringing this motion for vacatur within a reasonable time. To illustrate how New York applies this standard, the following recent cases from the Appellate Division guide this Court's decision. The Appellate Division held that a delay of six year in bringing a motion to vacate is an unreasonable delay. In Matter of U.S. Bank N.A. v Livingston, 199 AD3d 964 (2d Dept 2021), the Appellate Division held that "The Supreme Court properly determined that the defendants failed to move for vacatur under CPLR 5015 (a) (3) within a reasonable time. 'Although there is no express time limit for seeking relief from a judgment pursuant to CPLR 5015 (a) (3), a party is required to make the motion within a reasonable time' (citations omitted). (id.) The Second Department held that the defendants' failure to move for vacatur after more than six years after the entry of judgment constituted an unreasonable delay in bringing such motion, and such motion was properly denied. (id.)

A delay of four years and eight months in seeking relief from judgment has also been found to be unreasonable. (Long Is. Capital Mgt. Corp. v Silver Sands Motel, Inc., 167 AD3d 857 [2d Dept 2018] ["While there is no specific time limit within which to move under this provision, the motion must be made within a reasonable time. Here, the defendants failed to move for relief pursuant to CPLR 5015 (a) (3) within a reasonable time, as they delayed moving for more than four years and eight months after the Supreme Court granted the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment on the complaint, during which period of time the defendants engaged in other motion practice relating to this action despite their awareness of all the relevant facts necessary to support their theory that the loan was usurious."].)

Next, this Court turns its attention to Matter of Shah v NY State Off. Of Mental Health, 199 AD3d 955 (2d Dept 2021), which finds a lapse of three years in moving to vacate an order as unreasonable under the circumstances. In Shah, the Second Department held that "here, the record reflects that the plaintiff delayed for more than three years in moving to vacate the order dated September 29, 2016, despite his awareness of all the relevant facts pertaining to the defendants' alleged misrepresentations. Under such circumstances, the plaintiff's delay in moving to vacate the order dated September 29, 2016, was unreasonable. Accordingly, the court properly, in effect, denied the plaintiff's motion pursuant to CPLR 5015 (a) (3) to vacate the order dated September 29, 2016.

If delays of six, four, three, or three years are unreasonable and necessitate denial of a vacatur motion, Plaintiff's delay of more than eleven years since the Order of Dismissal constitute both an extreme and unreasonable delay in bringing this motion. Critically, as in the cases cited above, more than eleven years lapsed prior to the Plaintiff's attempt to vacate the December 19, 2011 Order of Dismissal despite the fact that the Plaintiff had awareness of all the relevant facts and circumstances in the case. Specifically, the Plaintiff had record notice of the Order of Dismissal entered on December 19, 2011. The same attorney has served as counsel to the Plaintiff from the time this action was commenced until the present motion was made. Despite the fact that the Plaintiff could at any time have checked with the Clerk's office, conspicuously located on the first floor of this courthouse, if it had any doubts as to the [*6]disposition of this action, it failed to do so.

This Court finds that the Plaintiff had notice of the dismissal, based upon the Defense counsel's assertion that he received notice, advised his client that the case was dismissed and destroyed his file. Moreover, this Court takes Plaintiff's herein motion to vacate as an express admission acknowledging this fact; the Plaintiff could not have moved to vacate an Order of Dismissal about which it had no knowledge or conscious awareness. Thus, the Plaintiff thus has not only failed to meet its minimum threshold burden of showing that it did not have notice of the Order of Dismissal, but Plaintiff's conduct in the instant motion also belies its unsubstantiated assertions to the contrary.

Properly applying the above-discussed case law necessitates denial of the Plaintiff's motion because the record clearly establishes that the Plaintiff had knowledge of all the relevant facts and circumstances to make this motion immediately after the action was dismissed. While vacatur is always within the trial court's discretion, this Court is limited by the applicable case law to reopening a dismissal more than several years after it was dismissed where the moving party had knowledge of the operative facts and circumstances needed to make such motion, as is the case here. Hence, the Plaintiff's motion must be and is denied in its entirety.

Moreover, granting the Plaintiff's motion would severely jeopardize the operative interests of justice inherent in all relevant New York case law. Allowing litigants to return to the courthouse after taking no action on a case for over a decade is an untenable policy that undermines the stability, predictability, and certainty required in any system of justice.

The Plaintiff's conduct here evokes in this Court the ancient maxim of equity "vigilantibus non dormientibus aequitas subvenit," which translates to, "equity assists the vigilant, not those who sleep upon their rights," applies here and guides this Court's discretion. This maxim of equity eventually formed the basis of the doctrine of laches, which is conceptually related to the bedrock justification that motions to vacate must be made within a reasonable period of time.

The doctrine of laches, that is, the equitable doctrine which bars the enforcement of a right where there has been an unreasonable and inexcusable delay that results in prejudice to a party, should bar the Plaintiff from its herein sought relief. (Skrodelis v Norbergs, 272 AD2d 316 [2d Dept 2000].) In rendering decisions on motions, "trial courts are not necessarily limited by the parties in their submissions." (Miller v Travelers Insurance Co., 75 AD3d 153, 157-158 [2d Dept 2010].) This Court finds that laches applies here premised upon the fact that the Defendant has been prejudiced due to the fact that this motion was made long after her counsel was permitted to destroy records in her case file, substantially impairing her ability to defend this case. Such a situation strongly weighs in favor of this Court declining to exercise its discretion in vacating the December 19, 2011 Order of Dismissal and serves as a separate and independent basis for this Court's conclusion.

Here, the Plaintiff here sat on its rights for over eleven years and completely failed to act, notwithstanding it maintained identical counsel from the commencement of this case to the instant vacatur motion. Furthermore, this Court finds that Plaintiff has failed to articulate a cognizable or even cogent argument for vacatur in the interests of justice. The instant Plaintiff here has offered no convincing legal or equitable rationale for the extended delay in bringing this vacatur motion. An eleven year delay in seeking relief from a judgment or order simply cannot be deemed reasonable where it is unmotivated by new evidence or material changes that the movant could not have known about in such time period. Granting vacatur after such an [*7]extensive time period of more than eleven years would serve only to create the conditions to undermine longstanding judicial decisions, thereby introducing a significant and unreasonable degree of arbitrariness to the finality of judgments or orders.

The principle of favoring stability in longstanding decisions is functionally linked at a conceptual level with the above-described balance of equities that tips in favor of the Defendant here: attempts at resurrecting decades old cases where records retention requirements have long since expired impairs both the fundamental procedural due process right of the non-moving party of being given a fair opportunity to defend oneself and also the foundational purpose of courts being able to accurately render findings of fact and resolutions of disputes according to their isomorphism with the truth.

Furthermore, the need for stability and finality of judgments and orders over longer periods of time becomes more acute when taking into account that all legal systems properly understood are extensive games of social coordination whose solutions rest on the legal structure encompassed beneath them. David Friedman employs the game-theoretic concept of Schelling points [FN1] to provide a succinct account of legal rules and systems as superstructures anchored upon the basic structure of such focal points [FN2] :

"If my analysis is correct, civil order is an elaborate Schelling point, maintained by the same forces that maintain simpler Schelling points in a state of nature. Property ownership is alterable by contract because Schelling points are altered by the making of contracts. Legal rules are in large part a superstructure created upon an underlying structure of self-enforcing rights." (David Friedman, A Positive Account of Property Rights, Social Philosophy and Policy ]Volume 11, Issue 2 ] [Summer 1994].)

Given that our modern American legal system is essentially a union of conduct-governing primary rules and secondary procedural rules that allow the creation, alteration, or extinction of primary rules (H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law [1961]), the allowance of an indefinite time period for the alteration of final trial court judgments and orders casts serious doubt on courts' ability to credibly commit to the integrity, and fundamentally, the essential validity of the corpus juris. Therefore, this Court finds that the terminus ad quem for legitimately challenging the December 19, 2011 Order of Dismissal has long since passed. In addition to the balance of equities tipping in favor of the herein Defendant, the policy of granting finality to a longstanding is favored.

While this Court finds that the Plaintiff has no meritorious argument for vacating the December 19, 2011 Order of Dismissal and restoring the action to this Court's regular calendar, pragmatically the underlying merits of the Plaintiff's vacatur motion have no effect on this Court's determination. The unreasonable lapse of time that the Plaintiff allowed to progress, [*8]while sitting on its rights to make this motion, prevents this Court from entertaining the substantive grounds raised in the motion, notwithstanding that the Court finds that no such statutory grounds exist in support of the Plaintiff's arguments. The herein elucidated grounds for denying the Plaintiff's instant motion, whether viewed separately or taken together as a whole, require denial of the Plaintiff's vacatur motion in its entirety. Thus, the December 19, 2011 Order of Dismissal is granted the finality that justice, the rule of law, and sound policy requires. The Court has considered other points of counsel raised by the Plaintiff at oral argument and found them to be unconvincing.

CONCLUSION

In the case at bar, adherence to the rule of law, the interests of justice, and adherence to the standards set forth in New York case law, granting the Plaintiff's instant vacatur motion would be an act of judicial licentiousness counter to the fundamental principles of New York law and the framework of justice enshrined in the United States Constitution's guarantee of the rule of law.

ORDERED that the Plaintiff's motion to vacate this Court's Order of Dismissal and restore the action to the Court's regular calendar is hereby DENIED in its entirety and the above-captioned action remains DISMISSED.

Dated: Buffalo, New York
July 5, 2023
Hon. Rebecca L. Town Footnotes

Footnote 1: A Shelling point, also referred to as a focal point, is a term in game theory used to refer to a solution to a coordination game that people tend to choose in the absence of express coordination or communication. (Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict [1960].)

Footnote 2: For a detailed discussion of the application of Schelling points to legal theory, see David Friedman, A Positive Account of Property Rights, Social Philosophy and Policy (Volume 11, Issue 2) (Summer 1994).