Leffler v. Kotick
Opinion
It appears you are using Adblock. Please disable Adblock to best experience our website.
Bureau Thomas J.K. Smith, State Reporter
Leffler v Kotick
2026 NY Slip Op 04372
July 9, 2026
Appellate Division, First Department
Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431.
This decision is uncorrected and subject to revision before publication in the Official Reports.
Marc Leffler, Plaintiff-Respondent,
v
Joel M. Kotick, Defendant-Appellant.
Decided and Entered: July 09, 2026
Index No. 155820/18|Appeal No. 7030|Case No. 2025-05933|
Before: Webber, J.P., Kennedy, Friedman, González, Shulman, JJ.
Joel M. Kotick, New York, appellant pro se.
Law Office of Richard A. Altman, New York (Richard A. Altman of counsel), for respondent.
Order, Supreme Court, New York County (Arthur F. Engoron, J.), entered June 5, 2025, which denied defendant's motion for summary judgment dismissing plaintiff's defamation claim, unanimously affirmed, with costs.
The law of the case doctrine precludes defendant from asserting that his defamatory statements were protected by an absolute or qualified privilege. This Court's determination in a prior appeal that "plaintiff established, prima facie, that defendant made substantially false statements, to a nonprivileged party, that plaintiff committed and suborned perjury at trial" and that defendant failed to create an issue of fact sufficient to defeat summary judgment (Leffler v Kotick, 187 AD3d 543, 543 [1st Dept 2020]) constitutes the law of the case on the issue of privilege (see Kreisler v B-U Realty Corp., 198 AD3d 568, 568 [1st Dept 2021]).
We reject defendant's assertion that the issue of privilege was never litigated and that he had no opportunity to address it. Defendant concedes that he intentionally refrained from asserting the defense of privilege in his first motion for summary judgment because he wished the complaint to be dismissed solely on the merits of the accusations. Nevertheless, the motion court reached the issue and found that the statements were not privileged (see Leffler, 187 AD3d at 543). Since defendant's privilege argument "could have been raised in [his] prior appeal . . . , which culminated in this Court's affirmance, the point is waived" (Goncalves v Stuyvesant Dev. Assoc., 244 AD2d 267, 268 [1st Dept 1997]; U.S. Bank N.A. v APP Intl. Fin. Co., B.V., 100 AD3d 179, 181 [1st Dept 2012], lv dismissed 8 NY3d 830 [2007]).
We decline to exercise our discretion to award sanctions (see 22 NYCRR § 130-1.1[a]).
We have considered defendant's remaining contentions and find them unavailing.THIS CONSTITUTES THE DECISION AND ORDER
OF THE SUPREME COURT, APPELLATE DIVISION, FIRST DEPARTMENT.
ENTERED: July 9, 2026
Links to or from other sites do not signify endorsement or relationship with them.
Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI
Leffler v. Kotick (Leffler v. Kotick) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.