Procedure
April 22, 2025
By Laura Trachtman
A Notice to Admit is, IMO, a largely overlooked litigation device that can be very useful. It has some particular uses that can lighten an attorney’s load and ease the general prosecution or defense of a client’s case.
First: what is a Notice to Admit? A Notice to Admit, which is authorized by CPLR § 3123, is a written request for the other side to admit something. It is designed to put to rest smaller factual issues, such as questions relating to dates, or the genuineness of documents, including photographs.
So why am I talking about it?
We all know that discovery takes up the most time, effort and expense of any litigation, excepting trial. Due to the 2021 updates to the CPLR and the NYCRR, a party may now only take 7 hours to depose another party or another witness, absent good cause shown. By serving a Notice to Admit upon the other party, you can supplement the Interrogatories (which are now also limited to 25 per party) and Requests for Discovery and Inspection without taking valuable time in a deposition that could be spent on more important issues. This is particularly the case if a party has served documents with conflicting information. For example, if the other side produced documents memorializing different dates for a contract, for example, or the date of hire, the Notice to Admit can be submitted to clear up the misunderstanding.
The true beauty of the Notice to Admit, however, is that unlike other discovery devices, if opposing counsel doesn’t timely respond, all topics contained within the Notice to Admit are automatically deemed admitted. So, if opposing counsel doesn’t seem to be as diligent as she should be, this device can be incredibly useful. Also, it can be served any time up until 20 days before trial, which is great because if there’s something you forgot to ask about during discovery and trial is coming up, you can still resolve the issue.
If opposing counsel does respond and denies, for example, the genuineness of a document, and the document is later determined to be genuine, the statute authorizes a motion for the expenses incurred, including attorney’s fees, in resolving this dispute. Furthermore, this remedy is available regardless of whether your client prevails on the merits.
Naturally, it does have its limits. You cannot use a Notice to Admit to get to the issues at the heart of a dispute: If you serve a Notice to Admit stating “Plaintiff admits that it breached its contract with Defendant” and Plaintiff’s counsel fails to respond within the statutory time period, the Court won’t allow the entire case to be resolved. The Notice to Admit can only be used for the matter in which it was served; it won’t serve as the basis for a res judicata motion down the line.
In sum, the Notice to Admit is a very handy device that can be used at basically any point in a litigation before trial, and that has potentially very high benefits at a very low cost.
April 8, 2025
By Laura Trachtman
The first thing that my dad made me do after I was admitted to practice was to register as a notary public with the State. Why? Because in order to file sworn documents with the Court, lo those many years ago, said document needed to be witnessed by a notary public. The exception, according to the older version of CPLR § 2106, was for lawyers, doctors, osteopaths, or dentists, all of whom were allowed to affirm, but when our clients needed a document submitted, it had to be notarized. Hence, my father’s insistence.
The answer to the obvious question of “what is a notary public?” will be abbreviated, because the history goes back to Cicero, and nobody wants that. Suffice to say that the notary public basically attests that you are who you say you are and that you have sworn under penalty of perjury that what you are saying is true. In actuality, the notary public would just check your identification to make sure you are who you say you are, and leave the perjurers to be relegated to the Eighth Circle of Hell, malebolge, which is reserved for those who commit crimes of fraud. Oh Dante, you never get old.
Perhaps realizing that trying to find a notary public in today’s day and age is like trying to find someone who uses a typewriter (they exist, but are challenging to locate), the Legislature amended CPLR § 2106 to allow anyone to affirm the truth of a document, not just the aforementioned professionals. Aside from making life a little bit easier for all involved, this amendment was also designed to bring New York Practice more in line with federal practice – a recent trend which shall pop up every so often in these blog posts.
It’s important to note that just because anyone can now make an affirmation, that privilege must not be taken for granted. For example, in Zhou v. Cent. Radiology, PC, 84 Misc. 3d 410, 418–19, 220 N.Y.S.3d 580, 586–87 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2024) (emphasis supplied), the litigants were not as meticulous as they should have been. The Honorable Tracy Catapano-Fox, addressed in some depth the seriousness of ensuring conformity with the language of CPLR § 2106:
It is first noted that plaintiff’s expert affirmations failed to comply with the requirements of CPLR § 2106. Plaintiff submitted documents titled “expert affidavit” from Dr. Englander and Dr. Papish, both physicians who were not licensed to practice medicine in New York. While the newly amended statute permits parties to submit affirmations rather than notarized affidavits, plaintiff’s out-of-state experts failed to affirm by the specific language of the statute. Instead, both “affidavits” merely state that the witness hereby affirms under the penalties of perjury, which is not in substantial compliance with CPLR § 2106. (See generally Nelson v. Lighter, 179 A.D.3d 933, 116 N.Y.S.3d 360 [2d Dept. 2020].) This Court recognizes that defendants did not oppose plaintiff’s motion on this ground. However, it is incumbent on the Court to uphold the integrity of the laws of New York, and ensure compliance by all parties. Further, the amendment to the statute was not made in an effort to lessen the seriousness of the affirmation and the consequences of making false statements, but instead was meant to reduce the burden of seeking a notary public to obtain a properly sworn affidavit. In reviewing the documents submitted, it is clear that they lack compliance with CPLR § 2106 in both form and substance. This error is not harmless or ministerial, as the brief language affirmed to by Dr. Englander and Dr. Papish did not demonstrate their acknowledgement of the import and seriousness of their statements made in the document as required by statute, and therefore cannot be considered by the Court. (CPLR § 2106 Advisory Committee Notes [“While attorney always have a professional duty to state the truth in papers, the affirmation under the proposed rule gives attorneys adequate warning of the possibility of prosecution for perjury for a false statement”].)
However, in Gao v. Coconut Beach/Hawaii, LLC, 83 Misc. 3d 1223(A), 212 N.Y.S.3d 815, at *3 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2024) (emphasis supplied), the Honorable Richard Reed, J.H.O., specifically wrote in his Decision and Order granting leave to enter a default judgment dated June 26, 2024, that “[t]he court notes that plaintiff submits with this motion an affirmation of plaintiff dated May 23, 2024, verifying his complaint. CPLR 2106, as amended on January 1, 2024, permits affirmations to be made by “any person” as long as it is stated “to be true under the penalties of perjury.” Because the affirmation is in conformity with the amended CPLR 2106, the complaint constitutes admissible proof for the purposes of this motion.” This is very straightforward: Because the affirmation is in the correct form as set forth in the statute, the Court accepted it.
This is a sobering morality tale of what happens to attorneys who do not bother to read the language of the statutes they rely upon. In today’s age of copy and paste, there is literally no excuse not to take the proper language straight from the statute itself. And in today’s age of “false news” and “deepfake,” the Courts are wise to take potentially perjurious submissions extremely seriously.
In sum, the amendments to CPLR § 2106 making it easier to submit documents from everyone are most welcome, but it appears as though the courts are on the lookout for those who submit papers failing to comply with the amendments. For that reason, it may be wise to have the text of CPLR § 2106 bookmarked until you’re able to memorize it.
Special thank-you to Professor Michael Hutter of Albany Law School and his wonderful CLE, 2025 CPLR Update, held through the auspices of the New York State Academy of Trial Lawyers, which I find to be a wonderful organization. Prof. Hutter drew special attention to this statute in that program, inspiring me to write this blog piece.
March 25, 2025
By Laura Trachtman
One of the questions I get most often from panicked clients is this: “I got served with a subpoena. What do I do??” Usually, it’s a tempest in a teapot, but sometimes it’s not. Let’s break it down a little bit.
There are many, many different types of subpoenas: subpoenas in criminal matters, in civil matters, in administrative matters. There are also different types of subpoenas: subpoenas asking the recipient to produce documents, and subpoenas asking the recipient to testify. For brevity’s sake, I’m going to address the singular most common subpoena to cross my desk: the subpoena duces tecum in a civil matter in the New York State courts.
I was about to reach for my father’s copy of Black’s Law Dictionary to get the actual Latin definition of the term, but no one wants that. [If you want that, subpoena is Latin for under penalty, and subpoena duces tecum is Latin for under penalty you shall bring with you.] A subpoena duces tecum is a subpoena asking the recipient to produce documents or evidence that is in their custody (i.e., they have them at their home or office) or control (they don’t possess the documents but can get hold of the documents). The form of the subpoena can shift a wee bit, but that’s what the subpoenaing party wants from the person being subpoenaed.
Who is the subpoenaing party? I’m glad you asked. Chances are good that it’s an attorney representing a client who is currently a party to a matter in the state courts. If it is, that’s the best option for the person being subpoenaed. Attorneys are allowed to issue subpoenas on behalf of their clients during a case. Here’s the catch: Attorneys do not have enforcement power, so that subpoena is a paper tiger.
Most serious is when the subpoena is issued by a judge. The courts naturally imbue their justices with enforcement power, but enforcing a So-Ordered subpoena, which is a subpoena that a judge has reviewed and signed and thus carries the weight of the court behind it, can be a real pain.
Finally, some jurisdictions allow a clerk of the court to issue a subpoena, and New York Supreme Court is one of those, but like the subpoenas issued by an attorney, this is without teeth. If you really want to be able to enforce your subpoena, you must convince a judge to sign it.
I’ve discussed enforcement of the subpoena, but what does “enforcement power” really mean? Broadly speaking, it means that if the judge tells you to do something (or don’t do something), you’d better obey, or else the judge can punish you by, among other things, holding you in contempt of court. (I was once banned from a courtroom for life, but that’s a story for another time.) The penalties associated with being held in contempt of court include a fine and a term of imprisonment. Best not to make that judge angry by disobeying the judge’s order.
In sum: what you do when you’re served with a subpoena really depends on who has issued the subpoena, and whether disobeying the subpoena means you’re going to get hauled into Court to face an irate judge, or whether absolutely nothing will happen to you.
November 19, 2024
If you’ve been following this blog, you’re familiar with the copyright infringement cases the New York Times and the Authors Guild have brought against OpenAI, makers of ChatGPT. So familiar, in fact, I won’t summarize these suits again. You can find a prior post about these cases here. The current dispute is interesting, at least to me (social media + law = fun for a nerd like me!) because it is another data point on how courts grapple with the blurry line between business and personal communications on social media.
Taking a step back for the non-litigators and non-lawyers in the room: In litigation, the parties must exchange materials that could have a bearing on the case. This generally covers a pretty broad range of materials and requires each party to produce all such materials that are in its “possession, custody, or control.” A party can also subpoena a non-party to the case for relevant materials in the non-party’s “possession, custody, or control.” However, where possible, it’s generally better to get discovery materials from a party instead of a non-party.
Turning back to the cases against OpenAI, the Authors Guild asked the tech company to produce texts and social media direct messages from more than 30 current and former employees, including some of the company’s top executives. It claims these communications may shed light on the issues in the case.
OpenAI has pushed back strongly. It claims that its employees’ social media accounts and personal phones are, well, personal and, therefore, not in its control. It also contends the Guild’s request might intrude on these persons’ privacy. OpenAI also rejects the Guild’s assumption that OpenAI’s search of its internal materials relevant to the case will be inadequate without its employees’ and former employees’ texts and DMs. It sniffs that the Guild should wait until it receives OpenAI’s documents before presuming as much (how rude!).
The Authors Guild has responded by pointing to OpenAI employees’ posts on X (yes, formerly Twitter) that clearly indicate they used their “personal” social media for work purposes. Same goes for their phones which, while they may not be paid for by the company, seem to have been used to text about business.
So, who’s right here? For starters, it seems pretty likely that, at least for current OpenAI employees, OpenAI could just tell people to turn over DMs and text messages. Assuming the employees don’t object or refuse, this should be enough to establish that OpenAI has “control.” The fact that it seems that OpenAI hasn’t taken this basic step before refusing to produce DMs and text messages seems like a really good way to piss off the Magistrate Judge hearing this issue, especially if the employees violated OpenAI policies requiring work-related communications to take place on devices and accounts owned by the company (it should have such policies if it doesn’t!) or if the communications were clearly within the scope of an employee’s employment. Without that basic showing, it seems likely that the Authors Guild will prevail.
If it does (or if it doesn’t) there will be more about it here!
May 16, 2023
Taking a break from our focus on trademark and copyright lawsuits, let’s look at a current high-profile case raising an issue that impacts all sorts of litigation — the obligation to preserve documents, including ephemeral messaging like online chats.
Why does this matter? In litigation, the discovery process requires each side to preserve documents and other materials relevant to the lawsuit so they can be provided to the opposing side. This obligation is triggered as soon as a party knows that litigation might happen. (We’re simplifying, but that’s the gist.) When a litigation starts, companies will often put in place a “litigation hold,” alerting employees who might have relevant information that they have to preserve documents. A litigation hold will also generally involve overriding the processes that might ordinarily delete emails, documents, etc.
Failure to preserve or provide these materials can have serious consequences. In extreme cases, a court will dismiss a plaintiff’s case or find against a defendant that has failed to comply with its obligation to preserve documents.
That brings us to a current lawsuit against Google brought by consumers, state attorneys general and app developers, claiming the omnipresent tech giant illegally monopolized the market for Android apps. During discovery, the plaintiffs noticed that Google hadn’t produced its employees’ instant messages related to the case. When the plaintiffs raised this issue, Google made some surprising revelations — its internal chats are generally deleted after 24 hours and it hadn’t suspended this automatic deletion for employees subject to the litigation hold in this case. Instead, Google allowed them to decide whether or not to preserve their instant messages.
Google is certainly no stranger to litigation holds. The company specifically trains employees to “communicate with care” because of the possibility of communications becoming public through discovery, and automatically preserves company emails that are subject to a litigation hold. And obviously, one of the world’s most powerful tech companies was perfectly capable of turning off auto-delete for the specific employees involved. Instead, Google simply told them not to discuss topics related to the litigation on chat but, if they did, to retain those specific chats if they felt the content was relevant. It was all self-policed: Google didn’t do anything to require employees to save chats or ever check to see if employees were complying. Only after the plaintiffs raised the issue during discovery did Google change its settings so that chats were saved by default.
In its attempt at explanation, Google argued that employees’ chats were mostly used for social purposes, even though the record (and common knowledge) clearly indicates that workplace chats are constantly used for substantive business purposes which, in this case, included matters relevant to the antitrust litigation.
The court, understandably, was not impressed by this argument. It concluded that as a result of Google’s lax policies, employees failed to save chats related to this litigation. The court also found that since employees were aware chats weren’t being preserved, they freely engaged in “off the record” convos related to the case knowing they couldn’t be used in court. The judge specifically rebuked Google for allowing employees to decide which chats could be used as evidence, pointing out that staffers probably wouldn’t be capable of making those judgments.
Ultimately, the court was very concerned about the intentionality of Google’s conduct, concluding that Google “intended to subvert the discovery process, and that Chat evidence was ‘lost with the intent to prevent its use in litigation’ and ‘with the intent to deprive another party of the information’s use in the litigation.’” The judge made it clear he believed Google was trying to destroy pertinent evidence, and directed Google to pay plaintiffs’ fees in connection with bringing this motion. The court also said that it would set a non-monetary sanction against Google at the end of discovery when the court is in a position to better determine what has been lost.
Overall lesson here: if you’re in a litigation, immediately start preserving all documents related to the case, including chats, just as you would to any other type of messages.
