Category Archives: New York Law

We recently published this on the SGR Blog.

The end of June often sees “blockbuster” decisions by the Court of Appeals before the Summer recess. But the 2018/2019 Term ended “not with a bang but a whimper.” Decisions dealt with important but mundane matters: whether or not a coke oven was a product or a service for strict liability purposes; whether buildings in Lower Manhattan that received certain tax benefits were subject to luxury rent deregulation; and whether an earlier and undocketed judgment of divorce was superior to a later and docketed judgement based on an arbitration award.

This was originally published on the SGR Blog.

As the 2018/2019 Term approached the “homestretch”, the Court of Appeals published a “blockbuster” 4-to-3 decision holding that a commercial tenant-to-be, represented by counsel, could waive the right to prosecute a declaratory judgment action and seek Yellowstone relief; another 4-3 ruling with respect to personal jurisdiction over the Ohio firearms’ salesman of a gun used in a New York homicide; and a 6-1 opinion relating to strict liability for design defects. Consistent with a recent trend, all three cases featured unusually strident dissents.

159 MP Corp. v. Redbridge Bedford, LLC
2019 NY Slip Op 03526
Decided on May 7, 2019

In New York, agreements negotiated at arm’s length by sophisticated, counseled parties are generally enforced according to their plain language pursuant to the strong public policy favoring freedom of contract. May commercial tenants who unambiguously agreed to waive the right to commence a declaratory judgment action as to the terms of their leases ask the Court to invalidate that waiver on the rationale that the waiver is void as against public policy?