| Sands v State of New York |
| 2008 NY Slip Op 02682 [49 AD3d 444] |
| March 25, 2008 |
| Appellate Division, First Department |
| Steven Sands, Appellant, v State of New York et al.,Respondents. |
—[*1] Andrew M. Cuomo, Attorney General, Albany (Frank K. Walsh of counsel), forrespondents.
Order of the Court of Claims of the State of New York (Alton R. Waldon, Jr., J.), enteredNovember 24, 2006, which granted defendants' motion to dismiss the claim and denied plaintiff'smotion for leave to file a late claim, unanimously affirmed, without costs.
Leave to file a late claim cannot be granted with respect to the intentional tort claims as theyall accrued more than one year before claimant moved for such leave (CPLR 215 [3]; Court ofClaims Act § 10 [6]; see Robertsv City Univ. of N.Y., 41 AD3d 825 [2007]). The claim for negligent hiring andsupervision against the State of New York lacks merit because it is uncontroverted in the recordthat defendant Vladimir Mejia, the security guard who allegedly assaulted claimant and causedhis malicious prosecution, was an employee not of the State but of City College, part ofdefendant City University of New York, whose dismissal for failure to timely serve a claim ornotice of intention to file a claim is not challenged by claimant on appeal.
To be meritorious, a claim must not be patently groundless, frivolous or legally defective,and the record as a whole must give reasonable cause to believe that a valid cause of action exists(Matter of Santana v New York State Thruway Auth., 92 Misc 2d 1, 11 [Ct Cl 1977]).Thus, the motion court did not abuse its discretion in denying claimant's motion to file a latenotice of claim pursuant to Court of Claims Act § 10 (6). Concur—Gonzalez, J.P.,Buckley, Moskowitz and Acosta, JJ.