Articles Posted in General Interest

In today’s ever concentrating society, where we live in close proximity to one another, I was wondering whether citizens in our communities ever considered the chiming of church bells and the blaring of fire horns to be a “nuisance,” and whether they ever sought to quite these things we hear every day. Here are some cases.

CHURCH BELLS

Langan v. Bellinger, 203 A.D.2d 857, 611 N.Y.S.2d 59 (3rd Dept. 1994)

So you go out one day and find that your neighbor has cut down your tree. What are your responsibilities, your rights when such tree has been removed illegally. Notwithstanding the fact that many municipalities have tree ordinances of varying types, the removal of trees on another’s land is illegal.

The question of whether to bring suit often turns on the question of whether the damages are sufficient to warrant a lawsuit. Was that tree your favorite Black Cherry. Indeed, the type and extent of the damages varies by statute, often determining whether the landowner brings suit in New York. For example, under New York’s Real Property Actions and Proceedings Law, RPAPL § 861, a landowner may seek treble or triple damages for the improper removal or cutting of a tree. That, three times the stumpage value of the tree, or $250, or both in addition to any permanent and substantial damage caused to the land if any person removes or attempts to remove any tree without consent.

Other actions that may be brought for injury to property include arguing there was a trespass of land. In Western New York Land Conservancy, Inc. v. Cullen, 886 N.Y.S.2d 303 (4th Dep’t 2009), the plaintiff-landowner sought treble stumpage value for tree damage to its property in a trespass action against the adjoining landowner. The court ruled that the plaintiff was not entitled to treble damages because he had failed to present evidence establishing stumpage value, and, instead, presented evidence of restoration costs. If the plaintiff in this case had presented credible evidence establishing stumpage value, the court would have likely awarded treble damages.

The growing popularity of the Internet as a means of communication has created a new way to spread potentially defamatory statements. Users may be held accountable in court for making defamatory remarks in these informal – but very public – forums, and blog posts. As long as statements are demonstrably false, someone other than the alleged defamer received the defamatory message, and the content was intended to injure or expose the victim to contempt or ridicule, Internet users can be liable for defamation.

So, what is defamatory, I recently saw an interesting article trying to explain when a New York Court might find a statement to be “opinion” (non actionable), as opposed to actionable words for defamation.

Defamation is generally defined as a false statement of fact that is harmful to some one’s reputation. Many people mistakenly believe that only factual utterances are actionable for defamation liability. Opinion, however, is actionable if it can be reasonably understood as declaring or implying actual facts that can be proven true or false. Courts examine the totality of the circumstances to distinguish factual statements from actual expressions of opinion.

As we all feel, some more than others, the economic recession has resulted in hundreds of thousands of suits filed by bill collectors in the New York courts. We always learned that a plaintiff (the collector) must prove the debt. Well, New York judges are here to tell these collectors that they better have a real and viable debt, which they can prove.

As recently reported by the NYTimes, a number of New York judges are speaking out against the increasingly sloppy litigation and collection practices of credit card debt collectors, who simply fail to investigate the claims, don’t have documentary proof of the debt, fail to properly serve the debtor, and make all sorts of errors when trying to collect often stale debt.

For example, one Manhattan appeals court recently threw out a credit card case because the debt collection company had apparently sued the wrong person; while a Nassau County District Court ordered a law firm to pay $14,800 in sanctions for ethical violations stemming from their improper debt collection efforts, which included ignoring court orders, making false statements, and harassing an alleged debtor even after the debt and case was dismissed. “Debt collectors seemed to think their lawsuits were taking place in a legal Land of Oz, where everyone was supposed to follow anti-consumer rules invented by some unseen debt-collection wizard.”

You are are sitting up late one night, thinking that your neigbor’s new fence is located on your property. You type in the search term fence and property into a search engine like Google or Yahoo! and 2.5 million returns hit you in 0.15 seconds. How do you narrow that search down to find information about the law in New York.

Well, there are various lawyer “Blawgs” that will give you an idea about the content. You can go to a place like Justia.com to find a listing of various Blawgs. That might get you to a real estate blog like this one. But it’s hard to find exactly the fact scenario you are looking for. Where else can you go?

New Yorkers are lucky to have a wonderful web-site that is accumulated by Cornell University. Searchers can find all sorts of helpful information on this site.