The Court of Appeals 2016-17 Term Leave Grants: April and May Sessions

The first seven sessions of the 2016-17 Court of Appeals term yielded 12 new cases granted by the Court (see Part 1 and Part 2 of my preview).  The April and May Sessions kept up the slow grant pace, with 4 grants in April and 1 in May.   Here’s a brief rundown of those cases.

April Session Grants

Matter of People of State of New York v Juarez, 143 AD3d 589 (1st Dept 2016)

Question presented: Whether the People can subpoena a reporter who interviewed a murder defendant while in jail to testify and produce her notes from the interview and overcome the qualified protection for a journalist’s nonconfidential material under Civil Rights Law § 79–h(c).

Mahoney v Brockbank, 142 AD3d 200 (2d Dept 2016)

Question presented: Whether, pursuant to CPLR 5002, prejudgment interest on the award should be computed from the date of the jury verdict on the issue of damages, or instead, from the date of the stipulation on the issue of liability.

Burns v Goyal, 145 AD3d 952 (2d Dept 2016)

Question presented: Whether doctors established entitlement to summary judgment where the patient was advised to stop a prescription for Plavix that had been prescribed by the defendant cardiologist in order to have a kidney biopsy, and the patient then died of a heart attack after going off the medication.

Matter of Lemma v Nassau County Police Officer Indemnification Board, 147 AD3d 760 (2d Dept 2017)

Question presented: Whether a Nassau County police officer would be entitled to defense and indemnification from civil liability pursuant to General Municipal Law § 50-l only where the Indemnification Board “determines that the officer acted both within the scope of his or her employment and in the proper discharge of his or her duties.”

May Session Grants

Matter of Sica v DiNapoli, 141 AD3d 799 (3d Dept 2016)

Question presented: Whether the Appellate Division correctly held that the record did not contain substantial evidence to support the Comptroller’s determination that petitioner firefighter’s injuries from being exposed to colorless and odorless gases while responding to an emergency at a supermarket were not the result of an “accident” within the meaning of Retirement and Social Security Law § 363.

Through the end of the May Session, the Court is up to 17 grants out of the 27 total for the 2016-17 term.  That leaves the last 10 cases that the Court granted this term for the June Session and Decision Days.  It will be a jam-packed final post of this 4 part series.  Then I plan to comb through the Clerk’s Office’s New Filings List to find the cases that the Appellate Division granted during the last term, as I continue the preview for the upcoming 2017-18 term of the Court of Appeals.