THE NYC COMPTROLLER’S SUBPOENAS FOR COVID-19-PLANNING-RELATED COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN MAYOR DE BLASIO AND THE FIRST DEPUTY MAYOR WERE PROPERLY QUASHED BY SUPREME COURT (FIRST DEPT).
The First Department determined Supreme Court properly quashed subpoenas issued by the NYC Comptroller seeking communications between Mayor de Blasio and First Deputy Mayor Fuleihan concerning the city’s COVID-19 pandemic planning. The First Department further held Supreme Court properly refused to quash other subpoenas issue by the Comptroller and properly ordered the depositions of two City witnesses without limitation of the scope of questioning:
In May 2020, in the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 public health emergency, Comptroller Scott Stringer commenced a [NYC Charter] Section 93(b) investigation of the City’s preparation for, planning for, and response to the pandemic to identify how those efforts impacted the City, its finances, residents and businesses. In connection with the investigation, the Comptroller issued a “request for information” to the City, which it sent to Dean Fuleihan, the City’s First Deputy Mayor, seeking information and communications related to COVID-19 … .
… [T]he court properly applied the public interest privilege to quash the document requests served on the Mayor and First Deputy Mayor. Generally, the public-interest privilege is a common-law rule that “attaches to confidential communications between public officers, and to public officers, in the performance of their duties, where the public interest requires that such confidential communications or the sources should not be divulged” because “the public interest would be harmed if the material were to lose its cloak of confidentiality” … . Matter of Comptroller of the City of N.Y. v City of New York, 2021 NY Slip Op 04685, First Dept 8-12-21