Opinion
May 21, 1990
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Kings County (Lodato, J.).
Ordered that the order is affirmed insofar as appealed from, with costs.
The Supreme Court, Kings County, properly exercised its discretion in severing the third-party action from the main action (CPLR 1010). The third-party action was not commenced until approximately 1 year and 3 months after issue was joined in the main action and approximately 4 months after summary judgment was awarded to the plaintiffs in the main action on the issue of liability. The defendants third-party plaintiffs proffered no reasonable justification for the delay. Although the main and third-party actions share some common questions of fact and law, we find that severance was warranted in the absence of any reasonable justification for the delay in serving the third-party complaint and in view of the possibility of prejudice to either the plaintiffs or the third-party defendant if that branch of the motion which was to sever was denied (see, Zuckerman v. La Guardia Hosp., 125 A.D.2d 304; Strange v. Sampson, 73 A.D.2d 749; Shipsey v. Katz, 58 A.D.2d 827; Vita Food Prods. v. Epstein Sons, 52 A.D.2d 522). Thompson, J.P., Bracken, Lawrence and Kunzeman, JJ., concur.