Opinion
2009-1583 S C.
Decided August 24, 2010.
Appeal from a judgment of the District Court of Suffolk County, Third District (C. Stephen Hackeling, J.), entered May 13, 2009. The judgment, after a nonjury trial, awarded plaintiff the principal sum of $2,521.
ORDERED that the judgment is affirmed without costs.
PRESENT: NICOLAI, P.J., TANENBAUM and IANNACCI, JJ.
Plaintiff commenced this small claims action to recover damages which he alleged resulted from defective repair work to his automobile performed by defendant. At the nonjury trial, it was established that on July 2, 2007, defendant rebuilt the transmission in plaintiff's vehicle and that at the bottom of the paid bill there appeared the following statement: "18 month 18,000 LOCAL LIMITED WARRANTY NO WARRANTY AGAINST ABUSE."
Plaintiff testified that, following the July repair, his vehicle developed problems when he had driven less than 1,000 miles: it over-heated quickly and the "check engine" light went on. Over the next 18 months, plaintiff and his daughter returned to defendant on at least three occasions, with complaints that the vehicle over-heated quickly, that the "check engine" light went on, that the vehicle rolled out of gear when it was parked, and that there were noises under the hood when the vehicle went 30 to 40 miles per hour. On one of those occasions plaintiff paid defendant $650 for additional repairs. In December 2008, plaintiff brought his vehicle to another repair shop, Queens Isuzu, where he was told, among other things, that his transmission wiring harness was malfunctioning, and he was advised to return to defendant. Defendant sent plaintiff to Barrett Automotive, which performed certain repairs on plaintiff's vehicle without charge. Plaintiff testified, however, that his vehicle continued to malfunction until March 2009, when Fred's Transmission World 3 charged him $2,817.97 to rebuild his transmission and his torque converter.
Defendant's witness testified that from the time when plaintiff first brought the vehicle in following the July 2007 transmission work, he had advised plaintiff that the problem with the vehicle was that it had tires of unequal size and three bad U-joints, which problems he had documented in the paper work he introduced into evidence at trial, and that plaintiff's failure to rectify these problems underlay plaintiff's subsequent complaints. Thus, he implied, the problems with plaintiff's vehicle were caused by abuse and lay outside the scope of defendant's warranty. Following the trial, the District Court noted that plaintiff had made out a prima facie case, that defendant had failed to meet its burden of proof on the warranty disclaimer issue and that, in any event, plaintiff had rebutted defendant's allegation of abuse. The District Court awarded judgment to plaintiff in the principal sum of $2,521.
Our review of the judgment is limited to a determination of whether substantial justice has been done between the parties according to the rules and principles of substantive law (UDCA 1807) and is confined to the record that was before the District Court; matter dehors the record is outside our purview ( see e.g. Devellis v Lucci, 266 AD2d 180, 181; Heatherwood House at Ronkonkoma, LLC v Kuehn , 21 Misc 3d 138 [A], 2008 NY Slip Op 52298[U] [App Term, 9th 10th Jud Dists 2008]). Upon our review of the record, we find no basis to disturb the District Court's determination that the problems plaintiff had with his vehicle all stemmed from defendant's defective repair work ( see Claridge Gardens v Menotti, 160 AD2d 544, 545). Accordingly, the judgment is affirmed.
Nicolai, P.J., Tanenbaum and Iannacci, JJ., concur.