Triboro Fastener & Chemical Products Corp. v. Lee
| Decision Date | 24 February 1997 |
| Citation | 653 N.Y.S.2d 960,236 A.D.2d 603 |
| Court | New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division |
| Parties | TRIBORO FASTENER & CHEMICAL PRODUCTS CORP., Respondent, v. Francis A. LEE, et al., Appellants. |
Goetz, Fitzpatrick & Flynn, LLP, New York City (Alan Winkler, of counsel), for appellants.
Melvin J. Kalish, Mineola, for respondent.
Before O'BRIEN, J.P., and JOY, FRIEDMANN and FLORIO, JJ.
MEMORANDUM BY THE COURT.
In an action, inter alia, for a lien against proceeds transferred by nonparty Cole Restoration Corp. to the defendant Francis A. Lee Exterior Restoration Corp., the defendants appeal, as limited by their brief, from so much of an order of the Supreme Court, Nassau County (Schmidt, J.), entered January 10, 1996, as denied their motion pursuant to CPLR 3211(a)(5) to dismiss the complaint on the grounds of collateral estoppel and/or res judicata.
ORDERED that the order is affirmed insofar as appealed from, with costs.
The plaintiff, Triboro Fastener & Chemical Products Corp. (hereinafter Triboro), obtained a default judgment in the sum of $72,321 against nonparty Cole Restoration Corp. (hereinafter Cole), a business owned by the defendant Francis A. Lee. After its efforts to recover the damages from Cole were unsuccessful, Triboro served a restraining notice upon Riverside Towers Corp. (hereinafter Riverside), which had retained Cole as the general contractor of an ongoing construction project. Triboro was not involved in Riverside's project. Riverside's attorneys placed twice the amount specified in Triboro's restraining notice into an escrow account for the benefit of subcontractors and materialmen. Triboro commenced a proceeding against Cole, Riverside, and another party pursuant to CPLR 5225 to force Riverside to release a portion of these funds. The Supreme Court, New York County, ruled that the account constituted a statutory trust under Lien Law article 3-A and could not be drawn upon by Triboro.
Triboro then commenced the instant action against the defendants alleging, inter alia, that they had fraudulently transferred funds payable to Cole by Riverside into other corporate accounts despite the pendency of the restraining notice and the outstanding default judgment against Cole. More than one year after the commencement of the action, the defendants moved to dismiss the complaint contending, inter alia, that the prior ruling by the Supreme Court, New York County, was res judicata or collateral estoppel. The Supreme Court properly found that the defendants' contentions are devoid of merit.
Res judicata bars future litigation between the same parties on the same cause of action (see, e.g., Matter of Hodes v. Axelrod, 70 N.Y.2d 364, 520 N.Y.S.2d 933, 515 N.E.2d 612)....
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