Levins v. Bucholtz

• Decision Date: 22 September 1955
• Citation: 208 Misc. 597,145 N.Y.S.2d 79
• Parties: Herman LEVINS, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Moe BUCHOLTZ, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: New York Supreme Court — Appellate Term

Page 79

145 N.Y.S.2d 79

208 Misc. 597

Herman LEVINS, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Moe BUCHOLTZ, Defendant-Appellant.

Supreme Court, Appellate Term, First Department.

Sept. 22, 1955.

Garvey & Conway, New York City, William N. Dickson, New York City, of counsel, for appellant.

Minot & Zasloff, New York City, Herbert S. Minot, New York City, of counsel, for respondent.

Before HOFSTADTER, SCHREIBER and HECHT, JJ.

HOFSTADTER, Justice.

On October 9, 1954, the plaintiff found his automobile, which he had left parked in a stall of a parking lot, damaged, with a note on the windshield stating that another car, bearing a given license number, had backed into it. After tracing to the defendant ownership of the car with this number, the plaintiff by notice brought the defendant into the Small Claims Part. The case was tried on the return day, the plaintiff appearing in person and the defendant by attorneys. The plaintiff recovered $50 and disbursements. The defendant, still represented by the same attorneys, has appealed. The plaintiff has submitted his own statement written in longhand. In addition, a firm of attorneys, acting without compensation, has submitted on his behalf a carefully prepared letter, in which it is urged that affirmance is necessary to the preservation of the integrity of proceedings in the Small Claims Part. These attorneys are to be commended for their public spirit, in thus participating in the appeal.

The appellant's brief does not demonstrate even remotely that the result below fails to do substantial justice according to the principles of substantive law; instead it argues in conventional style that hearsay evidence was received and that a prima facie case of negligence was not made out. But for the misconception revealed in other appeals which have come before us, of the true function of the Small Claims Part, the judgment would be affirmed without opinion. This misconception and its grave implications impel us to a fuller expression of our views.

The Small Claims Part came into being pursuant to Chapter 598 of the Laws of 1934. Though this legislation created what the Commission on the Administration of Justice believed the Justices of the Municipal Court could themselves establish by court rule (Report of Commission on Administration of Justice, dated January 25, 1934, pp. 29-30, 736-741), the medium set up was then no longer an innovation. There had been increasing awareness that existing courts, especially in large cities, did not provide adequate facilities for the litigant with a small claim who could not afford to employ a lawyer. Eventually it was recognized that real justice could be done in these cases only if delay, expense and precedural formality were dispensed with. In his illuminating and comprehensive study Reginald Heber Smith aptly said: 'The essential features of a small claims court are extremely low costs or none at all, no formal pleadings, no lawyers, and the direct examination of parties and witnesses without formality by a trained judge who knows and applies the substantive law.' Smith, Justice and the Poor, 2d ed. 1921, p. 56.

The subject is also dealt with by Roscoe Pound (Pound, The Administration of Justice in the Modern City, 26 Harv. Law Rev. 302 (1913); Organization of Courts, Boston, 1920, pp. 260-270). In his article in the Harvard Law Review Prof. Pound expressed these views: 'But it is a denial of justice in small causes to drive litigants to employ lawyers, and it is a shame to drive them to legal aid societies to get as a charity what the state should give as a right.' (p. 318) and 'In petty causes there ought to be no expensive advocacy.' (p. 319) See also: Schramm-Piedpoudre Courts, Pittsburgh (1928) pp. 114-115. The small claims court is an attempt to solve the problem, especially acute in a city with the large and heterogeneous population of the City of New York. Before the Small Claims Part of the New York Municipal Court was established, small claims courts had already been operating in Chicago, Cleveland, Portland and other cities and this experience was drawn on in setting up the New York system.

In 1954 night sessions of the Small Claims Part were inaugurated to make it readily accessible to those who cannot afford to lose working time by court attendance during the day--a step which received wide and favorable comment in the press at the time. At the first night session Presiding Justice Peck of our Appellate Division delivered an address in which he said: 'I suppose the most basic understanding is a realization that the means of the peaceable adjustments of disputes is the basis of any peaceful society.' N.Y.Law Journal, September 21, 1954, p. 1, col. 5. This realization, too, deters those least favorably circumstanced from taking the law into their own hands and becoming embroiled in neighborhood quarrels and brawls. 'The small claims courts are a mighty force in revising the present day opinion of the humbler classes as to law and courts.' Smith, op. cit. p. 53.

It is thus abundantly clear that the small claims court was devised to meet courageously and effectively the challenge of the...