MAURICE v. MAURICE (2020)

Order, Supreme Court, Bronx County (Rubén Franco, J.), entered March 14, 2019, which granted defendants' motion to vacate the default judgment entered against them, unanimously affirmed, without costs.

A motion to vacate a default may be granted if the movant establishes that its default was excusable and that it has a meritorious defense to the action (Eugene Di Lorenzo, Inc. v. A.C. Dutton Lbr. Co., 67 N.Y.2d 138, 141, 501 N.Y.S.2d 8, 492 N.E.2d 116 [1986] ).  Further, a client will not be deprived of his day in court on account of his attorney's “neglect or inadvertent error, especially where the other party cannot show prejudice and his position has merit” (Chelli v. Kelly Group, P.C., 63 A.D.3d 632, 633–634, 883 N.Y.S.2d 26 [1st Dept. 2009] ).  The IAS court did not abuse its discretion in granting defendants' motion to vacate here (Di Lorenzo, 67 N.Y.2d at 143, 501 N.Y.S.2d 8, 492 N.E.2d 116).

Plaintiff challenges only the “meritorious defense” prong of the IAS court's ruling, and has thus abandoned any argument relating to defendants' reasonable excuse of law office failure (Furlender v. Sichenzia Ross Friedman Ference LLP, 79 A.D.3d 470, 470, 912 N.Y.S.2d 204 [1st Dept. 2010] ).  Plaintiff has also failed to show that the IAS court abused its discretion in determining that defendants demonstrated a meritorious defense.  Defendants' moving papers cited to a pending e-filed summary judgment motion that had been submitted to the IAS court, as well as an upcoming “with-clients” settlement conference that showed their entitlement to a resolution on the merits.  Defendants were not required to attach their pending summary judgment motion to the motion to vacate, as it had already been e-filed with the court (Keech v. 30 E. 85 St. Co., LLC, 154 A.D.3d 504, 504, 61 N.Y.S.3d 499 [1st Dept. 2017];  CPLR 2214[c] ).

In keeping with the strong public policy in this State for resolving disputes on the merits, the order is affirmed.

We have considered plaintiff's remaining contentions, and find them unavailing.