Opinion
570129/02.
Decided September 26, 2003.
Plaintiff appeals from a judgment of the Small Claims Part of the Civil Court, New York County, entered on or about November 14, 2002 after trial (Cynthia S. Kern, J.) in favor of defendant dismissing the action.
PRESENT: HON. WILLIAM J. DAVIS, J.P. HON. PHYLLIS GANGEL-JACOB HON. MARTIN SCHOENFELD, JJ.
Judgment entered on or about November 14, 2002 (Cynthia S. Kern, J.) affirmed, without costs.
Plaintiff instituted this small claims action to recover interest allegedly due on certain bearer bonds issued in 1976 by a non-party entity and called for redemption in December 1999 by the defendant bank. On a prior appeal, this Court defined the dispositive issue to be whether defendant complied with "the bond requirement that notice of redemption be published in a newspaper of general circulation which carries financial news . . . and is customarily published each business day in the City of New York.'" (NYLJ, June 24, 2002, at 20, col 3.) No basis exists to disturb the trial court's express finding, made after a full and fair hearing, that defendant published its redemption notice in accordance with the above-quoted publication requirement of the underlying bond resolution. As the trial court noted, the evidence undisputedly showed that the Bond Buyer, the daily financial newspaper in which defendant's redemption notice appeared, though lacking "an enormous circulation generally, . . . clearly has a strong circulation within the community of bond buyers and bond sellers" and is "routinely" used for the publication of redemption notices ( see, Gampel v Burlington Indus., 43 Misc 2d 846). "The requirements of the [bond resolution] . . . are not so stringent that actual notice must be established by resort to mathematical probabilities. If the type of publication employed is reasonably calculated to give notice to the persons affected, it is adequate since the law does not guarantee the efficacy of its processes to carry home notice to every interested mind." ( Barrett v Cuskelly, 52 Misc 2d 250, 252, affd 28 AD2d 532).
Nor is appellate intervention warranted merely because the notice issue raised by plaintiff may be arguable. "[A] small claims judgment may not be overturned simply because the determination appealed from involves an arguable point on which an appellate court may differ; the deviation from substantive law must be readily apparent and the court's determination clearly erroneous." ( Schiffman v Deluxe Caterers of Shelter Rock, 100 AD2d 846, 846-847). The record herein establishes that the trial court's determination met the governing "substantial justice" standard (CCA 1804, 1807; see, Williams v Roper, 269 AD2d 125, lv dismissed 95 NY2d 898).
This constitutes the decision and order of the court.