Opinion
5721N Index 401034/13
02-15-2018
Dale WEINGARTEN, etc., Plaintiff–Appellant, v. Jeff BRAUN, Defendant–Respondent, Jonathan Jossen, et al., Defendants.
LeClairRyan, New York (Joseph M. Cerra of counsel), for appellant. McElroy, Deutsch, Mulvaney & Carpenter, LLP, New York (Robert B. Hille of counsel), for respondent.
LeClairRyan, New York (Joseph M. Cerra of counsel), for appellant.
McElroy, Deutsch, Mulvaney & Carpenter, LLP, New York (Robert B. Hille of counsel), for respondent.
Sweeny, J.P., Manzanet–Daniels, Gische, Kahn, Oing, JJ.
Order, Supreme Court, New York County (Charles E. Ramos, J.), entered June 29, 2017, which denied plaintiff's motion seeking, inter alia, discovery of the personal tax returns of defendant Jeff Braun, and a deposition of nonparty attorney, unanimously affirmed, without costs.
While New York has a broad policy of discovery, favoring disclosure, disclosure of tax returns is disfavored because of their confidential and private nature, requiring the party seeking to compel production to make "a strong showing of necessity and demonstrate that the information contained in the returns is unavailable from other sources" ( Williams v. New York City Hous. Auth., 22 A.D.3d 315, 316, 802 N.Y.S.2d 55 [1st Dept. 2005] [internal quotation marks omitted] ). Here, plaintiff failed to identify the particular information the tax returns of Braun will contain and its relevance to the claims made here. How Braun put the allegedly improperly obtained property to use, e.g., by allegedly claiming a loss on his personal taxes, is extraneous to whether the property was, in fact, improperly obtained. Similarly, plaintiff has failed to detail what information the nonparty attorney could offer in the proposed deposition that would be relevant to this claim (see Ortiz v. Rivera, 193 A.D.2d 440, 597 N.Y.S.2d 326 [1st Dept. 1993] ).
We have considered plaintiff's remaining contentions and find them unavailing.