Certain Underwriters at Lloyd's, London v. AT&T, Corp.

Order, Supreme Court, New York County (Eileen Bransten, J.), entered December 1, 2015, which denied defendant American Excess Insurance Association’s (AEIA) motion to compel arbitration, and order, same court and Justice, entered December 2, 2015, which denied AEIA’s motion to dismiss the complaint as against it, unanimously affirmed, with costs. AEIA’s motion to dismiss was filed well beyond the statutory time period (CPLR 3211 [e]; 3012 [a]), and the record does not support AEIA’s contention that the delay was due to plaintiffs’ actions. The motion to compel arbitration was correctly denied, as it cannot be said that plaintiffs, nonsignatories to the AEIA policy containing the arbitration clause that signatory AEIA seeks to enforce, “knowingly exploited]” the AEIA policy or derived a “direct benefit” from it (Matter of Belzberg v Verus Invs. Hold *922 ings Inc., 21 NY3d 626, 631 [2013] [internal quotation marks omitted]; see also Matter of SSL Intl., PLC v Zook, 44 AD3d 429, 430 [1st Dept 2007]). Concur — Mazzarelli, J.P, Acosta, Saxe, Moskowitz and Gesmer, JJ.