You’re a commercial litigator in New York. You’ve just been brought in on a case pending in the Commercial Division before a particular Commercial Division judge.  Or maybe you’ve just received an administrative bounce to a Commercial Division RJI Addendum, assigning your case to a particular Commercial Division judge sitting in the county where you recently filed motion papers or requested a preliminary conference. What’s the first thing you do?  You check the rules, of course.

Obviously, that begins with familiarizing (or re-familiarizing as the case may be) yourself with the Commercial Division Rules – particularly Rules 7 through 24, which supersede the Uniform Civil Rules with respect to conferencing your case and engaging in motion practice.

Know the Rules

But you also should look to see whether the particular Commercial Division judge assigned to your case has individual practice rules – which rules, in turn, often supersede or otherwise modify the Commercial Division Rules. Those Commercial Division judges that have individual practice rules update their rules with some regularity, so you also should make a point of checking them periodically.

As a recent example, Manhattan Commercial Division Justice Eileen Bransten, whose practice rules begin with the general principle of application noted above – namely, that “the Commercial [Division] Rules govern all cases before Justice Bransten unless modified or changed below” – updated her rules in March of this year. Some of the more notable updates to Justice Bransten’s “Practices in Part 3” are as follows:

  • Correspondence with the Court:       All letters to Justice Bransten, including pre-motion conference letters under Commercial Division Rule 24, in addition to being e-filed on the NYSCEF system, must be “hand delivered” to her Part Clerk and must conform to the font requirements of “Times New Roman, Size 12.”
  • Court conferences: Justice Bransten’s updated practice rules link to forms for the New Revised Preliminary Conference Stipulation and Order, as well as the New Compliance Conference Stipulation and Order, both of which are required for conferences held in Part 3.
  • Filing under seal: Justice Bransten’s updated practice rules provide for extensive direction concerning the filing of documents under seal:
    • Applications to file under seal must be made by Order to Show Cause;
    • Parties must meet and confer regarding the documents proposed for sealing before making a motion to file under seal;
    • Motions to file under seal will be considered in light of the limitations imposed on sealing as dictated by recent case law; moving parties must propose document redactions “as opposed to the wholesaling sealing of documents”;
    • Any document proposed for sealing must be filed in its original, un-redacted form as an exhibit to the motion, with the proposed redacted version of the document filed “as a subset of that exhibit”;
    • All motions to file under seal must be accompanied by a jointly-created index of the documents proposed for sealing, to include the basis for the proposed sealing and any objection thereto.
  • Motion practice in general:
    • Justice Bransten requires a courtesy (hard) copy of all e-filed motion papers;
    • If a party wishes to submit a deposition/hearing transcript or an arbitration award as an exhibit to a motion, the document must be submitted in its entirety as opposed to excerpts;
    • When submitting a Statement of Material Facts under Commercial Division Rule 19-a in support of a motion for summary judgment, a party must provide specific “references to appropriate documentation” establishing that the facts are undisputed; the party opposing the motion must “first repeat the movant’s claimed undisputed facts followed by its response,” which also must provide “reference to appropriate documentation.”
    • Consistent with her prior rulings on the topic (see e.g. ZV NY, Inc. v Moskowitz 44 Misc 3d 1225[A] [Sup Ct, NY County 2014), attorney affirmations in which counsel present arguments of law – sometimes referred to as “memo-affs” or “brief-adavits” or “brief-irmations” – “will not be considered by the Court.”
  • Trial practice:
    • Justice Bransten will not give parties a trial date unless and until they have attempted some form of ADR, whether privately or through the Commercial Division’s ADR Program.
    • All pre-trial submissions (briefs, witness and exhibit lists, and motions in limine, etc.) must be “both e-filed and hand delivered to the Part in hard copy.”