Milner v. New York State Higher Education Services Corp.

4 Misc. 3d 221, 777 N.Y.S.2d 604, 2004 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 566
CourtNew York Court of Claims
DecidedApril 29, 2004
DocketClaim No. 104248
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 4 Misc. 3d 221 (Milner v. New York State Higher Education Services Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New York Court of Claims primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Milner v. New York State Higher Education Services Corp., 4 Misc. 3d 221, 777 N.Y.S.2d 604, 2004 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 566 (N.Y. Super. Ct. 2004).

Opinion

OPINION OF THE COURT

Richard E. Sise, J.

[222]*222Synopsis: Defendant’s motion for summary judgment is granted. Claimant’s cross motion for summary judgment or in the alternative for relief pursuant to Court of Claims Act § 10 (6) is denied.

Text of the decision: Claimant has brought this action asserting two causes of action. In the first claim, she seeks damages for injuries she alleges were sustained, when, beginning sometime prior to September 1999, the defendant began issuing false statements regarding the status of her student loans to credit reporting agencies. Claimant’s second cause of action seeks injunctive relief and a letter of apology.

Defendant, viewing the claim as sounding in defamation has moved for summary judgment asserting the claim is untimely, barred by truth as an absolute defense and that the defendant enjoys a qualified immunity in making the at-issue statements. (Friedman affirmation 1Í 4.) Defendant further asserts claimant has failed to properly plead a cause of action for defamation by failing to allege actual damages and the specific words and/or date of the alleged defamatory statements (id.).

The court begins its analysis with the jurisdictional issue raised by defendant that the claim, construed by defendant as pleading an intentional tort, defamation, was not served within the applicable statute of limitations. Claims for intentional torts are required to be served and filed within 90 days of accrual, unless the time to serve the claim is extended by service of a timely notice of intention to file a claim, then the claim must be served and filed within one year of the date of accrual (Court of Claims Act § 10 [3-b]). It is black letter law that the service and filing requirements of the Court of Claims Act are to be strictly construed (see Lichtenstein v State of New York, 93 NY2d 911, 912-913 [1999] [Court of Claims Act § 10]; Finnerty v New York State Thruway Auth., 75 NY2d 721, 722 [1989] [Court of Claims Act § 11]).

Contrary to claimant’s assertion, defendant’s first affirmative defense satisfies the particularity requirement of Court of Claims Act § 11 (c) as it provides “adequate and clear notice to any reasonable person that a defect is claimed to exist and that it may at some point be used as the basis of a motion to dismiss” (Sinacore v State of New York, 176 Misc 2d 1, 6 [1998]; see also Fowles v State of New York, 152 Misc 2d 837 [1991]) and refers both to the relevant statute and to the requirement that was vitiated. As such, the statute of limitations defense is preserved.

Defendant relies upon Gelbard v Bodary (270 AD2d 866 [2000], lv denied 95 NY2d 756 [2000]), wherein a libel and [223]*223slander claim involving the further distribution of a letter to a review committee, first published a month earlier, was dismissed, in part, under the single publication rule. The Court stated “a reading of libelous material by additional individuals after the original publication date does not change the accrual date for a defamation cause of action but, rather, the accrual date remains the time of the original publication” (id. at 866; see also Vogel v State of New York, 187 Misc 2d 186 [2000]; PJI 3:26 [2003]).

Claimant counters this argument by pointing out that defendant provided monthly updates to the three credit reporting agencies and the Department of Education (Meyerson affirmation 1Í 36). Relying on Rinaldi v Viking Penguin (52 NY2d 422, 433 [1981]), which held that a republication of a book in paperback that repeats the defamation in a later edition could still give rise to a new cause of action, claimant argues the updates are distinct publications with each month giving rise to a new cause of action thereby removing defendant’s alleged defamatory statement from the single publication rule.

Defendant in reply argues that even if the single publication rule were not applied to the monthly updates, the claim would still be time-barred as the last update was published to the Department of Education and credit reporting agencies in August 2000 (Friedman reply affirmation H 12).

The Court of Appeals in 1948 adopted the single publication rule holding that “the publication of a defamatory statement in a single issue of a newspaper, or a single issue of a magazine, although such publication consists of thousands of copies widely distributed, is, in legal effect, one publication which gives rise to one cause of action and that the applicable Statute of Limitation[s] runs from the date of that publication” (Gregoire v Putnam’s Sons, 298 NY 119, 123 [1948]). The single publication rule received its most recent interpretation in a claim far removed from Guttenberg’s printing presses in Firth v State of New York (98 NY2d 365 [2002]), a claim involving publication on the Internet. In Firth, the Court of Appeals applied the single publication rule to a Web site posting holding that successive “hits” were not a republication nor was the Web site republished each time material unrelated to the defamatory content was updated (Firth v State of New York, 98 NY2d 365 [2002]).

In the instant claim, the point made in Gelbard is pertinent in that the credit reports, a document neither made nor distributed by the defendant, are read by many upon request, a [224]*224circumstance over which the defendant has no control (accord, Firth v State of New York, 98 NY2d 365 [2002] [multiple publication rule for Web site access rejected]). A fair reading of claimant’s papers discloses claimant does not distinguish between the actions of the defendant and the actions of the credit reporting agencies.1 In this regard, the credit reports — such as that from First American CredCo (see n 1, supra) — are properly viewed as being akin to a late sale from a remote publishing event (see Gregoire, supra) and do not trigger a new claim or accrual date.

More problematic is whether the monthly updates provided by defendant constitute a republication. The court’s research has disclosed two cases regarding the “continued reporting” of allegedly defamatory credit information to credit agencies. In Ferber v Citicorp Mtge., Inc. (1996 WL 46874, 1996 US Dist LEXIS 1210 [SD NY, Feb. 6, 1996, Schwartz, J.]), plaintiffs learned that certain loans, managed by another partner, had become delinquent early in 1992 and requested that Citicorp Mortgage work with them to resolve the matter as plaintiffs intended to fulfill their obligations under the loans. Despite plaintiffs’ efforts from August to October 1992, including tender of payments, Citicorp in October 1992 reported to credit bureaus plaintiffs’ default and that foreclosure proceedings had been commenced. Plaintiffs sought to amend their complaint to add allegations that Citicorp continued to report the loans in default from April 20, 1993 through May 18, 1993. The District Court denied the proposed amendment finding that the “continued reporting” was not a republication giving rise to a new cause of action as “[n]o alleged modification contained in the reports issued after April 26, 1993 distinguish them from those already issued to their intended audience” (1996 WL 46874, *6, 1996 US Dist LEXIS 1210, *17). As such, the proposed amendment lacked merit in that it was barred by New York’s one-year statute of limitations for defamation actions (id.; see also CPLR 215 [3]). A similar result was reached in David J. Gold, P.C.

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Related

Hukic v. Aurora Loan Services
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Milner v. New York State Higher Education Services Corp.
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4 Misc. 3d 221, 777 N.Y.S.2d 604, 2004 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 566, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/milner-v-new-york-state-higher-education-services-corp-nyclaimsct-2004.