Opinion
May 7, 1956
Edward Pious for plaintiff.
Henry L. Finkelstein for Tagakotta Sotto, defendant.
Motion to vacate warrant of attachment is denied. Plaintiff sets forth a prima facie cause of action against defendant Sotto, a nonresident of the State.
Concededly, Sotto is domiciled in and a permanent resident of Pakistan; he arrived in this country on February 2, 1956, as a temporary visitor for his "own personal affairs and business"; he was registered at the Hotel Chesterfield in New York during his entire stay in the United States; the warrant of attachment was issued on March 5, 1956, and personally served on Sotto, March 12, 1956; he departed from this country on March 26, 1956.
Such absence from a permanent residence and presence as a transient sojourner at a hotel in New York do not establish the status of resident of New York under the statute which permits attachment where "the defendant is either a foreign corporation or not a resident of the State" (Civ. Prac. Act, § 903).
The circumstances of defendant Sotto's presence in the State differ from that of the defendant Dorsey in the case cited by defendant herein ( Loew's Inc. v. Dorsey, 197 Misc. 1069), wherein Dorsey had no permanent residence and his stay in a New York hotel, though temporary, was his only place of abode at the time of the issuance of the attachment.