Advice Staffing, Inc. v. C. Stasky Assoc., Ltd.

Advice Staffing, Inc., Appellant, against C. Stasky Associates, Ltd., Respondent. Appeal from an order of the Civil Court of the City of New York, Queens County (Donna Marie Golia, J.), entered September 3, 2015. The order, insofar as appealed from, granted defendant's motion to vacate a default judgment. ORDERED that the order, insofar as appealed from, is reversed, without costs, and defendant's motion to vacate the default judgment is denied. Upon defendant's failure to appear and answer the complaint in this action to recover the balance due for temporary labor provided by plaintiff to defendant, plaintiff obtained a default judgment. Plaintiff appeals from so much of an order of the Civil Court, entered September 3, 2015, as granted defendant's motion to vacate the default judgment. On appeal, plaintiff contends that defendant failed to demonstrate a reasonable excuse for its default and a meritorious defense. Upon a review of the record, we find that the Civil Court improvidently exercised its discretion in granting plaintiff's motion to vacate the default judgment, as defendant failed to meet its burden of demonstrating a reasonable excuse for its default (see CPLR 5015 [a] [1]; Eugene Di Lorenzo, Inc. v A.C. Dutton Lbr. Co., 67 NY2d 138, 141 [1986]). Defendant attributes its default to a failure by its former attorney. However, defendant's president's conclusory and unsubstantiated allegations of defendant's former attorney's law office failure are insufficient to establish a reasonable excuse (see Buchakian v Kuriga, 138 AD3d 711, 713 [2016]; Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. v Cervini, 84 AD3d 789 [2011]; see also M & T Bank v Morris, 138 AD3d 939 [2016]). Accordingly, the order, insofar as appealed from, is reversed and defendant's motion to vacate the default judgment is denied. Weston, J.P., Aliotta and Elliot, JJ., concur. Decision Date: February 08, 2017