Opinion
2013-04-10
Harsharan SETHI, appellant, v. Deborah MORRISSEY, et al., respondents.
Law Office of Vincent R. Fontana, P.C., Garden City, N.Y., for appellant. Moritt Hock & Hamroff LLP, Garden City, N.Y. (A. Jonathan Trafimow, Randy S. Zelin, and Juan Luis Garcia of counsel), for respondents.
Law Office of Vincent R. Fontana, P.C., Garden City, N.Y., for appellant. Moritt Hock & Hamroff LLP, Garden City, N.Y. (A. Jonathan Trafimow, Randy S. Zelin, and Juan Luis Garcia of counsel), for respondents.
In an action to recover damages for defamation, the plaintiff appeals from an order of the Supreme Court, Nassau County (Bucaria, J.), entered February 9, 2012, which granted the defendants' motion pursuant to CPLR 3211 to dismiss the complaint.
ORDERED that the order is affirmed, with costs.
Contrary to the plaintiff's contention, the Supreme Court properly directed dismissal of the complaint as time-barred ( see CPLR 3211[a][5] ). The statute of limitations for an action to recover damages for defamation is one year ( see CPLR 215[3] ), measured from the date of publication of the allegedly defamatory statement ( see Ross v. Kohl's Dept. Stores, Inc., 65 A.D.3d 540, 541, 882 N.Y.S.2d 911;E.B. v. Liberation Publs., 7 A.D.3d 566, 567, 777 N.Y.S.2d 133). The plaintiff did not commence the instant action until approximately 18 months after the publication of the challenged statement. Moreover, the complaint did not allege misleading conduct on the part of the defendants upon which the plaintiff could have reasonably relied to delay commencement of the action, so as to equitably estop the defendants from asserting the bar of the statute of limitations ( see IDT Corp. v. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., 12 N.Y.3d 132, 141, 879 N.Y.S.2d 355, 907 N.E.2d 268;Zumpano v. Quinn, 6 N.Y.3d 666, 674–675, 816 N.Y.S.2d 703, 849 N.E.2d 926;Reiner v. Jaeger, 50 A.D.3d 761, 762, 855 N.Y.S.2d 613;Duberstein v. National Med. Health Card Sys., Inc., 37 A.D.3d 209, 210, 829 N.Y.S.2d 95;Teneriello v. Travelers Cos., 226 A.D.2d 1137, 1138, 641 N.Y.S.2d 482;Jordan v. Ford Motor Co., 73 A.D.2d 422, 424, 426 N.Y.S.2d 359).
In view of the foregoing, we need not consider the parties' remaining contentions.