East Coast Med. Care, P.C. v State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 2006 NYSlipOp 26040
In an interesting case from Civil Kings, a Judge declared a mistrial after a no-fault trial on her own initiative. The trial involved one bill (the others had been setttled) and:
After the close of plaintiff’s case-in-chief, during a recess in the proceedings for the end-of-year holidays, the presiding judge was informed by the Office of Court Administration (OCA) that she was being reassigned from civil to criminal court, and that all pending matters were to be turned over to the supervising judge of the civil court for reassignment to other judges.
The Judge was allowed to stay in Civil Court an extra week to complete the trial, but after a week the trial had not yet concluded and the Judge was told to go to Criminal Court. The Judge declared a mistrial; neither party moved for it.
The decision goes through the standard for a mistrial:
With respect to motions for mistrials, the law is clear that the decision as to whether or not to grant a new trial lies in the discretion of the court, when it appears that owing to some accident or surprise, defect of proof, unexpected and difficult questions of law, or like reason, a trial cannot proceed without injustice to a party.
The Court found that there were no decisions that applied to a situation like this in a Civil matter, but noted that there are Criminal decisions on point as well as a Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure (R. 25) that gave some guidance. Both seem to allow for the Mistrial according to The Court. The Court went on to distinguish the one case that did not.
Also, the decision cites section 21 of the Judiciary law:
[A]ccording to section 21 of the Judiciary Law, a judge “shall not decide or take part in the decision of a question, which was argued orally in the court, when he [or she] was not present and sitting therein as a judge.”
In the end, the court came to this conclusion:
In the instant case, because it is a bench trial, it would be seemingly improper for a substituted judge to render a decision based on evidence he or she did not hear, given by witnesses whose credibility he or she could not evaluate. Therefore, because a different judge could not be allowed to continue the trial, the only question is whether the trial judge’s reassignment constitutes a sufficient unexpected disability to warrant the declaration of a mistrial.
In the case at bar, the trial judge was able to stay her reassignment for one week, which the parties asserted would be a sufficient amount of time in which to conclude the presentation of all of the evidence. Unfortunately, the parties were mistaken, and the trial could not be completed within this time frame. No other judge could be substituted, it was not possible for the judge to further delay her duties in a different court, although she was willing to do so, and an indefinite continuance until the judge might be reassigned back to civil court would be impracticable. As a consequence, in the interests of justice, the court had no alternative but to declare a mistrial.
The most amazing part of this decision is the fact that this was a no-fault trial that lasted over a week. AMAZING.
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