Citizens Defending Libraries v. Marx

135 A.D.3d 582, 24 N.Y.S.3d 40

• Court: Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
• Decided: January 19, 2016
• Docket: 652427/13 -16712A 16712 16711
• Status: Published

Opinion

Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Paul Wooten, J.), entered July 10, 2014, dismissing the complaint, with costs to defendants, unanimously affirmed, without costs. Appeals from order, same court and Justice, entered June 3, 2014, which, inter alia, granted defendants’ cross motions to dismiss, and order, same court and Justice, entered April 20, 2015, which denied plaintiffs’ motion to renew defendants’ cross motions, and, upon reargument, adhered to the determination on the original motions, unanimously dismissed, without costs, as subsumed in the appeal from the aforesaid judgment.

The motion court correctly determined that, at the time it granted defendants’ motions to dismiss the complaint, this action was not moot and thus that vacatur of the June 3, 2014 order was not warranted. The decision of defendant New York Public Library (NYPL) to reconsider its plan for renovations of its Central Branch did not resolve all the issues raised in the complaint.

The court also correctly determined that plaintiffs did not have standing to maintain a cause of action for public nuisance, because they did not suffer a special injury beyond that suffered by the community at large (see 532 Madison Ave. Gourmet Foods v Finlandia Ctr., 96 NY2d 280, 292 [2001]). Nor were plaintiffs third-party beneficiaries of any agreements between NYPL and the other defendants, NYPL’s Charters or Acts of Consolidation, or other historic documents establishing its underlying entities, and thus had no standing to sue for any alleged breach of the terms of those agreements (see Alicea v City of New York, 145 AD2d 315 [1st Dept 1988]).

We have considered plaintiffs’ remaining arguments and find them unavailing. Concur — Tom, J.P., Friedman, Saxe and Kapnick, JJ.