| Pozament Corp. v AES Westover, LLC |
| 2008 NY Slip Op 04014 [51 AD3d 1080] |
| May 1, 2008 |
| Appellate Division, Third Department |
| Pozament Corporation, Appellant, v AES Westover, LLC,Respondent. |
—[*1] Hinman, Howard & Kattell, Binghamton (Leslie P. Guy of counsel), forrespondent.
Malone Jr., J. Appeals (1) from that part of an order of the Supreme Court (Lebous, J.),entered March 7, 2007 in Broome County, which, among other things, granted defendant's crossmotion to compute interest on the jury verdict in plaintiff's favor from January 1, 2003, and (2)from the judgment entered thereon.
On July 1, 2000, the parties entered into a contract under which defendant agreed to provideplaintiff with coal fly ash produced at its steam generating station in the Village of Johnson City,Broome County through December 31, 2004. Defendant provided plaintiff with coal fly ash onvarious dates between September 27, 2000 and November 20, 2000, but failed to do sothereafter. Plaintiff commenced this breach of contract action as a result. Following a trial, thejury rendered a verdict in favor of plaintiff and awarded damages in the amount of $184,456.94.Thereafter, plaintiff moved to fix the date of interest on the verdict as of July 1, 2000, thecontract date, or alternatively, as of April 1, 2001, the date the summons and complaint werefiled. Defendant, in turn, cross-moved to set aside the verdict or, alternatively, to have interest onthe verdict computed in a different manner. Specifically, defendant sought to have interestcomputed on a monthly basis between December 2000 and December 2004 or from January 1,2003, the intermediate date of the contract. Supreme Court declined to set aside the verdict andchose January 1, 2003 as the date from which to compute interest.
Plaintiff's sole challenge on appeal is to the date that Supreme Court utilized in computingpreverdict interest. CPLR 5001 (b) provides that in a case like this where damages [*2]are incurred at various points in time, preverdict interest "shall becomputed upon each item from the date it was incurred or upon all of the damages from a singlereasonable intermediate date" (see e.g. Danka Off. Imaging Co. v General Bus. Supply,303 AD2d 883, 886 [2003]). The statute vests the court with broad discretion in determining areasonable date from which to award interest (see Conway v Icahn & Co., Inc., 16 F3d504, 512 [1994]). In the case at hand, January 1, 2003 is the approximate halfway point betweenthe time that plaintiff initially began to incur damages due to defendant's breach of the contractand the time that plaintiff ceased to incur damages due to the expiration of the contract. SupremeCourt's selection of this date makes logical sense under the facts of this case. Accordingly, wefind that Supreme Court chose a reasonable date from which to compute interest and did notabuse its discretion.
Cardona, P.J., Carpinello, Rose and Stein, JJ., concur. Ordered that the order and judgmentare affirmed, with costs. [See 14 Misc 3d 1210(A), 2006 NY Slip Op 52473(U).]