Garnes v. City of New York
- Edgardo Ramos
- 1:22-cv-01769
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Garnes v. City of New York, Judge Ramos denied an adjournment request while leaving defendants’ reconsideration motion unresolved.
Mark Garnes, the City of New York, and Nikodemus Petrone were affected by the scheduling ruling; the parties were required to attend the March 13, 2025 pretrial conference as scheduled.
What happened
Mark Garnes sued the City of New York and Nikodemus Petrone after he said he requested a lawyer before refusing a chemical breath test following his arrest. The opinion text states that Garnes represented himself and that the court had previously found a factual dispute concerning his denial-of-access-to-counsel claim.
The defendants asked the court to reconsider its earlier denial of their request for summary judgment. They argued that the Sixth Amendment did not give Garnes a right to a lawyer before the breath test and that his New York-law claim was untimely because he filed his notice of claim more than 90 days after the incident. They also asked to postpone the scheduled pretrial conference.
The court denied the request to postpone the March 13, 2025 conference and directed the parties to appear as scheduled. Judge Edgardo Ramos’s endorsement does not state a decision on the defendants’ request for reconsideration or on the arguments about summary judgment.
The detailed version
- Garnes v. City of New York · No. 1:22-cv-01769
- Edgardo Ramos
- Mar. 11, 2025
What the filing concerned
The text is principally a memorandum from the defendants, the City of New York and Nikodemus Petrone, asking the court to reconsider its February 25, 2025 decision denying their motion for summary judgment on Mark Garnes’s denial-of-access-to-counsel claim. It also asks to postpone a pretrial conference scheduled for March 13, 2025.
Background
According to the filing, Garnes was arrested on November 26, 2020, for driving under the influence and taken to the 45th precinct, where he was asked to take a chemical breath test. Garnes said he requested an attorney before taking the test; Petrone denied that request. Garnes ultimately refused the test. His complaint asserted claims under the Sixth Amendment and the New York State Constitution.
The filing states that the court previously found a genuine dispute of material fact about whether Garnes had a denial-of-access-to-counsel claim and therefore denied the defendants’ motion for summary judgment on that claim. The defendants argued in their reconsideration request that the court had treated the federal and state-law claims as if they had the same legal standards.
Defendants’ arguments
For the Sixth Amendment claim, the defendants argued that a request to take a chemical breath test is not a stage of the criminal process at which the constitutional right to counsel applies. They relied on the filing’s discussion of cases stating that chemical testing is investigatory and that New York law does not allow a person to condition consent to the test on first consulting a lawyer.
For the state-law claim, the defendants argued that Garnes did not timely file a required notice of claim. The filing states that the incident occurred on November 26, 2020, but that Garnes filed his notice of claim on July 1, 2021. The defendants therefore argued that the court lacked jurisdiction over the state-law claim.
Court’s action
The court’s endorsement denied the defendants’ request to postpone the conference. It directed the parties to appear on March 13, 2025, at 10:00 a.m. in Courtroom 619 of the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse.
The text provided does not show that Judge Edgardo Ramos ruled on the defendants’ motion for reconsideration. It therefore does not establish that the court granted or denied reconsideration, changed the earlier summary-judgment ruling, or resolved either counsel claim on the merits.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.