Monica Poster, Plaintiff, v. LLC STOP SHOP STORE 2582 LONG BEACH GROCERY OWNERS LLC LONG BEACH MARKET OWNERS LLC (2026)

This is a slip-and-fall personal-injury action. Plaintiff, Monica Poster, alleges that she was injured in a supermarket operated by defendant Stop and Shop Supermarket Company, LLC on property that Stop and Shop leases from defendants Long Beach Grocery Owners, LLC (Grocery LLC), and Long Beach Market Owners, LLC (Market LLC).

Plaintiff is a resident of Nassau County; and the supermarket in which she alleges that she was injured is located in the Town of Long Beach in Nassau County. Stop and Shop leases the supermarket premises as the subtenants of Grocery LLC and Market LLC, which are in turn tenants in common under a ground lease of the land from the town. Stop and Shop, Grocery LLC, and Market LLC are each Delaware limited-liability companies.

Defendants now move under CPLR 511 to change the place of trial from New York County to Nassau County. The motion is denied.

Defendants argue that the place of trial should be changed to Nassau County because venue is improper in New York County. This argument is without merit. Venue may properly be laid in a county in which one of the parties resided when the action was commenced. (See CPLR 503 [a].) An authorized foreign corporation or LLC "shall be deemed a resident of the county in which its principal office is located." (CPLR 503 [c].) For venue purposes, the principal office of a foreign corporation or LLC is determined by the county that the corporation or LLC designates in its business registration with the Secretary of State. (See Shetty v Volvo Cars of N. Am., LLC, 38 AD3d 202, 202-203 [1st Dept 2007].) This court may take judicial notice of the fact that the business registrations of Grocery LLC and Market LLC each designate New York County as the location of their principal offices.¹ (See NYSCEF No. 13 [registration of Grocery LLC]; NYSCEF No. 14 [registration of Market LLC]; LaSonde v. Seabrook, 89 AD3d 132, 137 n 8 [1st Dept 2011] [judicial notice].) Given this designation, it is immaterial that the sole "business of [Grocery LLC and Market LLC] is ownership of the Long Beach Property" at which plaintiff allegedly fell. (NYSCEF No. 28 at ¶ 12 [defendants' reply mem. of law].) Indeed, a foreign LLC's designation of a particular county controls for venue purposes even if the LLC "does not actually have an office in New York County." (Janis v Janson Supermarkets LLC, 161 AD3d 480, 480 [1st Dept 2018].)

Because two of the defendants in this action resided in New York County when plaintiff commenced the action, venue is proper in New York County and need not be transferred to Nassau County. Nor do defendants attempt to establish that another basis exists for transferring venue (such as the convenience of witnesses).

Accordingly, it is

ORDERED that defendants' motion for change of venue is denied; and it is further

ORDERED that the parties shall appear before this court for a telephonic preliminary conference on March 27, 2026.

DATE 3/9/2026

FOOTNOTES

1.   For clarity, the court refers here to the "County" entry in these LLCs' Secretary of State filings, as distinct from the county in which the LLCs' listed service address is located.

Gerald Lebovits, J.