The Second Department upheld seizure of a gun seen in plain view after a plate database inquiry on an illegally parked vehicle indicated the plates might be stolen.
The Second Department held that a defamation suit over a campaign email qualified for New York anti-SLAPP protection and affirmed more than $22,000 in fee awards.
The Second Department held that a school district’s use of village parkland was only an easement in gross or revocable license because the Legislature never plainly authorized an appurtenant easement.
The Second Department upheld Suffolk County’s DWI vehicle-forfeiture law and found forfeiture of a $21,000 Nissan proportionate to a repeat felony DWI involving extreme speeding.
The Second Department held that a court may reopen a SORA hearing before final disposition to correct its risk calculation, provided the offender had notice and a meaningful opportunity to respond.
The Second Department held that state cannabis law preempts Riverhead’s expanded school buffer while preserving rational local zoning distinctions.
Second Department affirms that the Presbytery holds a trust interest in a departing congregation’s 240 Main Street property under PCUSA’s constitutional trust clause and New York’s neutral principles of law approach.
The Appellate Division, Second Department reverses a weapon possession conviction after finding that officers lacked reasonable suspicion to pursue a man who walked between two residential driveways, rendering the subsequent discovery of a discarded firearm the product of an unlawful seizure.
The Appellate Division, Second Department holds that a former seminarian’s race, sexual orientation, and disability discrimination claims against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and Cardinal Dolan are non-justiciable under the First Amendment’s ecclesiastical abstention doctrine, because adjudicating them would require the court to evaluate his progress in Catholic priestly “human formation” — an inquiry into religious doctrine the courts may not conduct.