Mees v. City of New York
- Alison Nathan
- 1:19-cv-07346
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Mees v. City of New York, Judge Nathan denied reconsideration of an earlier refusal to allow a late notice of claim.
Heleen Mees’s effort to file a late notice of claim was affected; the court denied her request for reconsideration, and the defendants’ motion to dismiss remained due two weeks later.
What happened
In Mees v. City of New York, Heleen Mees asked the court to reconsider its earlier decision denying her permission to file a late notice of claim. She had argued that her claims accrued in July 2019 because she continued to suffer harm from defendants’ earlier actions.
The court said Mees had not identified a controlling legal decision, new evidence, or a clear error that justified reconsideration. The court also said her argument that defendants’ opposition in a state-court proceeding was separately actionable was a new argument that she had not previously raised.
Judge Nathan denied the motion for reconsideration. The court also stated that, under an earlier order, defendants’ motion to dismiss was due two weeks after this order.
The detailed version
- Mees v. City of New York · No. 1:19-cv-07346
- Alison Nathan
- Apr. 7, 2020
Background
On January 8, 2020, the court denied Heleen Mees’s motion for permission to file a late notice of claim. Mees then moved for reconsideration of that decision.
The earlier decision rejected Mees’s argument that her claims accrued in July 2019, when the Appellate Term denied her motion to reconsider a motion for leave to appeal. Mees argued that she continued to suffer damages from defendants’ earlier allegedly unlawful actions. The court had concluded that continuing damages did not extend the date on which the claims accrued.
Reconsideration standard
The court explained that reconsideration is an extraordinary remedy that should be used sparingly. A party generally must identify an intervening change in controlling law, newly available evidence, or a need to correct a clear error or prevent manifest injustice. The party must ordinarily point to controlling decisions or information that the court overlooked and that could reasonably change its prior conclusion. A reconsideration motion may not be used to present new facts, issues, or arguments, or to relitigate issues already decided.
Court’s analysis
The court held that Mees did not identify controlling authority contrary to the earlier decision. Instead, she appeared to argue that defendants’ opposition to her state-court motion was itself actionable conduct. The court found that this argument had not been raised in the initial motion and therefore could not be used as the basis for reconsideration. The court also stated that the fact Mees did not file a reply brief on the initial motion did not change that result, because new arguments may not be raised for the first time in a reply brief.
The court added that the motion would fail even if it considered Mees’s arguments without applying the reconsideration standard. The proposed notice of claim said that Mees intended to sue the individual defendants for suppressing material exculpatory evidence during plea discussions and the City for vicarious liability. It identified claims under Section 1983 and various state tort theories, including an intended Section 1983 action against the Manhattan District Attorney’s office based on alleged due-process violations.
The court concluded that, even when read generously, the proposed notice did not give notice of an intent to sue under state tort law for defendants’ opposition to Mees’s state-court motion. The court stated that the timeliness of a notice of claim must be measured from the event underlying the claims asserted in that notice. It therefore concluded that defendants’ conduct in the Appellate Term did not extend the accrual date for the claims Mees actually intended to pursue in the proposed notice.
Disposition
Judge Alison J. Nathan denied Mees’s motion for reconsideration. The order also stated that, under the court’s February 28, 2020 order, defendants’ motion to dismiss was due two weeks from the date of this order. The order resolved docket entry 49.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.