The latest reversal for Yates, a finalist for last summer’s open seat on the state Court of Appeals, turned on his interpretation of the provision in the Vehicle and Traffic Law that covers “turning movements.” The statute states that turn signals “shall be used to indicate an intention to . . . change lanes.”

As Yates saw it, that does not mean drivers absolutely must use their turn signal each and every time they move from one lane to another. The Appellate Division concluded, to the contrary, that the law means drivers must do exactly that, whether there are other cars in the vicinity or not.

The issue reached Yates in the case of Wayne Rice, who was driving north on Amsterdam Avenue near West 153rd Street one evening in 2005 when he safely changed lanes twice without first signaling his intention to do so. Two officers following in a patrol car ran a check on his license plate and learned that the car was rented and hadn’t been reported as stolen. They pulled Rice over anyway due to his breach of the traffic law.

The officers proceeded to question Rice about what he was doing in that car on that street at that hour, and discrepancies soon began to emerge in his story. For one thing, he had one rental contract in his name and another in the name of someone else. Their suspicions raised, the officers ordered Rice out of the car, and were frisking him for their own safety when they discovered a wad of cocaine stuffed in his underwear.

Yates was convinced that the traffic stop was illegal, and so he granted Rice’s motion to suppress the cocaine evidence. But the appellate panel said that “in view of the clear language of the statute, coupled with its unequivocal legislative history, we can only conclude that [Yates] erred when [he] determined that [the statute] does not require a signal, in all instances, when changing a lane.” The stop was lawful, and so was all the evidence recovered in the ensuing search, the panel concluded, reversing Yates and denying the motion to suppress. People v. Rice  (August 23)

In the other case since the first of last year in which Yates was reversed for suppressing evidence, he ruled that the police had no good reason to grill a person who was “unquestionably . . . of transgender appearance and display” about why he was carrying a woman’s handbag. The Appellate Division disagreed, explaining that the officers had good reason to question him because as far as they could tell, he was a man suspiciously clutching a woman’s purse, not an appropriately accessorized transvestite. After all, he was sporting a three-day’s growth of beard. People v. Lomiller

OTHER NOTABLE REVERSALS

 
NEW YORK COUNTY

TORT, FIDUCIARY: Justice Jane S. Solomon fell for a specious theory — that a self-proclaimed spiritual adviser and expert in women’s matters named Mordecai Tendler owed a fiduciary duty to an erstwhile follower, which he violated by seducing her. Solomon’s ruling allowed the plaintiff, Adina Marmelstein, to make an end-run around a law that bars damage suits stemming from love affairs gone awry, but the Appellate Division nixed the gambit. As the appellate panel explained, “the mere giving of advice that is in turn accepted is not sufficient to create a fiduciary relationship.” Dispensing with that clever attempt by Marmelstein to sneak her claim into court, the appellate panel concluded that Tendler’s alleged conduct “falls squarely within the embrace” of the law that was intended to prevent the courts from being flooded with suits by jilted paramours. Marmelstein v. Kehillat New Hempstead: Rav Aron Jofen Community Synagogue  (August 23)

FAMILY: Justice Sara P. Schechter ruled that two sisters should be put up for adoption though there was no viable plan to make that happen. In fact, as the Appellate Division noted in its reversal of Schechter’s ruling, one of the two girls couldn’t be put up for adoption because she is 14, the age at which a child’s consent is required, and had said she would refuse to be adopted. The other girl, a 13-year-old, had recently warmed up to the idea. But since she had previously expressed reservations, and since she is approaching the age at which her consent will be required, a further hearing on her case is needed, the appellate panel concluded. Matter of Shakima Renee M. v. Hilda S. (August 23)

REAL ESTATE: Justice Charles E. Ramos erred in pinning the owner of a garage unit in a condominium with the full cost of repairing the underground parking structure’s leaky roof. According to the Appellate Division, the roof, which not only shelters the garage but also holds up a courtyard used by all, does not exclusively benefit the defendant, so it is a “common element” that owners of all units are responsible for maintaining. Royal York Owners Corp. v. Royal York Associates L.P.  (August 23)

LANDLORD TENANT: Civil Court Judge Laurie L. Lau blew off a tenant’s repeated requests for a jury trial and resolved the case in favor of the landlord after a bench trial, a result that was overturned by the Appellate Division. Lau had no good reason for spurning the pro se tenant’s demand for a jury trial, which he asserted in his answer and for which he paid the required fee, the appellate panel said. Escorp Inc. v. Myers  (August 23)

BRONX COUNTY

EVIDENCE: Justice William C. Donnino convicted Israel Vasquez of participating in a contract murder based on evidence that boiled down to “simply nothing that could lead a rational trier of fact to conclude that defendant was proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” the Appellate Division said. The sole witness against Vasquez gave testimony that was inconsistent and contradictory. That was enough to convince the jury of Vasquez’s guilt, and a jury’s credibility determinations are due great deference. But this jury was way out of line on that count, and Donnino should have stepped in and granted an acquittal notwithstanding the guilty verdict, the appellate panel concluded. People v. Vasquez  (August 23)

TORT: Judge Alexander W. Hunter, Jr., handed out a damage award that was 80 times higher than the most that the Appellate Division thought the plaintiff deserved. The appellate panel didn’t deign to describe the nature of Bernard H. Glatzer's claim, but the court did note that Glatzer's testimony was “in key respects, contradicted by an affidavit he submitted, riddled with inconsistencies and unworthy of belief.” That didn’t stop Hunter from awarding Glatzer $1.2 million in damages, after granting his motion to impose treble damages on a jury verdict of $400,000. The award deviates materially from what is reasonable compensation, said the appellate panel, ordering a new trial on damages unless Glatzer stipulates to a $15,000 award. Glatzer v. Michael F. Hanley Moving and Storage, Inc.  (August 23) Hunter’s most recent prior reversal came on May 3  in a case in which he awarded $790,000 in damages to a medical assistant who was pricked by a needle that she had used to draw blood from an HIV-positive patient. A divided appellate panel slashed Hunter’s award for the plaintiff’s (ultimately unfounded) fear of AIDS nearly in half.

TORT: In a case involving claims of crippling injuries incurred in a fender bender, Justice Patricia Anne Williams failed to properly instruct the jury that the question of who caused the accident was distinct from the question of whether the accident caused the alleged injuries. There was no question that the defendant tapped the plaintiffs’ car in the rear, causing minimal damage to the vehicles. But if the jurors had been properly instructed that they were free to do so, they might well have concluded that the accident was not the proximate cause of the injuries, said the Appellate Division, which proceeded to set aside the jury verdict. Rodriguez v. Budget Rent-A-Car Systems Inc. (August 23)

INSURANCE LAW: Justice Alan J. Saks, ignoring an order from another judge who had given the defendants more time to file a motion for summary judgment, dismissed the motion on grounds that it was untimely. Not only should Saks have accepted the late motion, he should have granted it, the Appellate Division said. On the merits, the defendants established their entitlement to summary judgment by offering unrefuted evidence that their vehicle was not moving when it was struck by the vehicle driven by the plaintiff, who also failed to demonstrate that he suffered a serious injury as defined in the Insurance Law. Fernandez v. Laret (August 23)

KINGS COUNTY

FAMILY: Justice Debra Silber awarded custody of children to their paternal grandmother over their mother’s objections without giving an extraordinary reason, as required when trumping a biological parent’s claim to their child. The Appellate Division reversed Silber, awarded custody to the mother and sent the case back to court for a hearing to determine the grandmother's visitation rights. Matter of Jamison v. Chase

NO-FAULT INSURANCE: Justice Bernadette Bayne summarily dismissed a claim by two plaintiffs, who claimed they suffered a “serious injury” in an auto accident, based on deficient medical testimony presented by the defense. A doctor retained by the defendants examined the plaintiffs and reported on the range of motion in their spine, but failed to compare those findings to the normal ranges of motion, the Appellate Division observed in reinstating the complaint. Hypolite v. International Logistics Management Inc.

QUEENS COUNTY

INSURANCE: Justice Jaime A. Rios, who has been reversed three times this year for allowing automobile accident victims to proceed with dubious uninsured-motorist claims, was reversed this time for erroneously staying arbitration of an uninsured-motorist claim. Rios insisted that the culpable driver’s assigned-risk auto insurance policy was still in effect at the time of the accident, even though he had stopped making payments months earlier, because the agency financing the policy had failed to follow proper procedures in cancelling for nonpayment. The Appellate Division, disagreeing with Rios, concluded that the agency had no legal obligation to notify the policyholder that he had a right of review. The cancellation therefore was effective and Rios should have sent the parties to arbitration of their claim for uninsured-motorist coverage, the appellate panel said. Matter of Government Employees Insurance Co. v. Lopez

SENTENCING: Justice Barry Kron convicted Ricardo Cisneros of a third-degree drug possession count, though Cisneros had pleaded guilty to a drug offense in the seventh degree. The Appellate Division corrected Kron’s sentence to comport with the guilty plea. People v. Cisneros  (August 21)