THE INTERIM DECISION ISSUED BY SUPREME COURT WAS NOT THE EQUIVALENT OF AN ORDER; THE FIRST DEPARTMENT, THEREFORE, DISMISSED THE APPEAL FOR LACK OF JURISDICTION (FIRST DEPT).
The First Department, dismissing the appeal in this Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) case, determined the “interim decision” was not an appealable paper, depriving the First Department of jurisdiction:
This proceeding stems from Spectrum News NY1’s (Spectrum) attempts to gain access to video files from the voluntary body camera experiment. Specifically, Spectrum filed a FOIL request for unredacted videos from the NYPD’s voluntary body camera program begun in 2014. NYPD denied the request, claiming that unredacted files were exempt from disclosure under FOIL. Spectrum then commenced this article 78 proceeding seeking a judgment compelling respondent NYPD to comply with its request. …
… [T]he parties stipulated that out of a disputed 328 videos, only 30 would be the subject of the hearing. Supreme Court then issued “an interim decision,” which was not the product of a motion for relief. Instead, the “interim decision,” among other things, permitted respondents to redact the faces of persons other than officers from any video footage recorded by the body cameras and to redact certain communications between officers … . …Supreme Court granted petitioner leave to appeal from the “interim decision.”
This appeal is thus taken from an “interim decision,” which is not an appealable paper. The lack of an appealable paper here deprives the Court of jurisdiction and requires dismissal of Spectrum’s appeal, albeit without prejudice. Where, as here, a party brings an appeal from a nonappealable paper, this Court regularly dismisses the appeal for lack of jurisdiction … . While there are instances where this Court has deemed a paper denominated as a “decision” to nonetheless be appealable because it contained all the hallmarks of an order … , that is not the situation here. Matter of Spectrum News NY1 v New York City Police Dept., 2020 NY Slip Op 00521, First Dept 1-28-20