Betts v. Sixty Lower East Side, LLC
- Naomi Buchwald
- 1:20-cv-04772
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Betts v. Sixty Lower East Side, LLC, Judge Buchwald denied defendants’ request to certify an interlocutory appeal of an earlier liability ruling.
The three defendant entities’ request for certification of an interlocutory appeal was denied. The opinion states that liability issues would remain for resolution at trial.
What happened
In Betts v. Sixty Lower East Side, LLC, the court considered whether the hotel-related defendants could immediately appeal an earlier ruling about their liability for allowing an unregistered massage therapist to treat Margaret Betts. The earlier ruling found that the defendants’ conduct violated a New York law and contributed to Betts’s injuries.
The defendants argued that the law allowed the therapist to perform massage therapy because a massage license lasts for life. They asked the court to certify an immediate appeal. Betts opposed the request.
Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald denied the defendants’ motion. She ruled that the defendants had not shown a substantial disagreement about the legal issue and that an immediate appeal would not materially advance the case because liability issues would still need to be resolved at trial.
The detailed version
- Betts v. Sixty Lower East Side, LLC · No. 1:20-cv-04772
- Naomi Buchwald
- June 24, 2024
Background
The case concerns Margaret Betts’s alleged sexual assault by a massage therapist during an in-room massage appointment at the Sixty LES hotel on October 19, 2018. The opinion states that the hotel was owned and managed by Sixty Lower East Side, LLC, Sixty Hotels, LLC, and Sixty Hotel Manager, LLC.
In an earlier August 2023 ruling, the court resolved issues of liability. It found that the defendants’ conduct was negligence per se under New York Education Law § 7802 and that the conduct proximately caused Betts’s injuries by allowing her massage to be performed by an unregistered massage therapist who was not then authorized to practice massage therapy in New York.
Defendants’ Appeal Request
The defendants asked the court to certify an interlocutory appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b). An interlocutory appeal is an appeal before the case is fully finished. Certification requires a controlling legal question, a substantial basis for disagreement about that question, and a showing that an immediate appeal may materially advance the end of the litigation.
The defendants repeated an argument they had made during the earlier summary-judgment proceeding: that they had not violated Section 7802 because a massage therapist’s license is issued for life. The court had previously rejected that argument, explaining that people who hold licenses must register every three years to continue actively practicing massage therapy.
Ruling
Judge Buchwald denied the defendants’ motion. She concluded that the defendants had not shown a substantial ground for disagreement with the court’s ruling or identified contrary authority. The court acknowledged that its application of the New York Education Law might have been novel, but stated that a legal issue being one of first impression, by itself, was not enough to justify an interlocutory appeal.
The court also ruled that an immediate appeal would not materially advance the litigation. Even if the earlier ruling were reversed, liability issues would remain for resolution at trial under a different standard. The Clerk of Court was instructed to terminate the motions listed at ECF Nos. 90, 104–108, and 110–111.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.