| Perry v Collegis, Inc. |
| 2008 NY Slip Op 08178 [55 AD3d 459] |
| October 28, 2008 |
| Appellate Division, First Department |
| Dorothea Perry, Appellant, v Collegis, Inc., Defendant, andNew York Law School, Respondent. |
—[*1] Nixon Peabody LLP, Jericho (Christopher G. Gegwich of counsel), for respondent.
Order, Supreme Court, New York County (Marcy S. Friedman, J.), entered July 2, 2007,which granted the motion of defendant New York Law School (NYLS) for summary judgmentdismissing the complaint, unanimously affirmed, without costs.
The motion court properly found that plaintiff's employment agreement with defendantCollegis was terminable at will and thus could only support a claim for tortious interference withprospective contractual relations (see e.g. Carvel Corp. v Noonan, 3 NY3d 182, 191-192[2004]; Guard-Life Corp. v Parker Hardware Mfg. Corp., 50 NY2d 183, 191-192[1980]). The evidence demonstrates that plaintiff has no tenable claim that NYLS acted for thesole purpose of harming her, or that it utilized "wrongful means" (see Snyder v Sony MusicEntertainment, 252 AD2d 294, 299-300 [1999]). Plaintiff's contention that her employmentwas terminated because NYLS threatened not to renew its contract with Collegis is unsupportedby the evidence, and, in any event, is an insufficient basis for the tortious interference claim(see Sumitomo Bank of N.Y. Trust Co. v DiBenedetto, 256 AD2d 89 [1998], lvdenied 93 NY2d 804 [1999]). Concur—Mazzarelli, J.P., Andrias, Nardelli andBuckley, JJ.