Opinion
February 7, 1991
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Schenectady County (Plumadore, J.).
Plaintiff suffered injuries when the car in which she was a passenger was involved in an accident with a car owned and operated by defendants. Plaintiff seeks damages from defendants, who commenced a third-party action against third-party defendant who operated the car in which plaintiff was a passenger. It appears that an answer in the third-party action was not served until some 42 days after it was due because third-party defendant's insurance carrier failed to promptly forward the third-party complaint to its counsel. Defendants rejected the answer. After defendants moved for a default judgment, third-party defendant moved for leave to serve a late answer. Supreme Court granted a default judgment and denied leave to serve a late answer. We dismissed an appeal from the default judgment ( 157 A.D.2d 991) and third-party defendant moved to vacate the default. Supreme Court denied the motion and this appeal followed.
We affirm. Relief from default under CPLR 5015 (a) (1) requires, inter alia, a reasonable excuse for the pleading delay (see, e.g., Rockefeller v Jeckel, 161 A.D.2d 1090). In this case, third-party defendant has attributed his delay in answering to some "inadvertent internal delay" of its insurance carrier. There is no detailed recitation of explanation for the delay as was offered in cases where a default was vacated, such as Pickney v Wood ( 165 A.D.2d 949) or Davies v Contel of N.Y. ( 155 A.D.2d 809). We cannot accept the rather amorphous excuse offered as reasonable. In the absence of a suitable excuse, we are constrained to affirm Supreme Court's denial of third-party defendant's motion to vacate the default judgment entered against him.
Order affirmed, with costs. Mahoney, P.J., Casey, Weiss, Mercure and Harvey, JJ., concur.