About New York Appellate Digest

An independent website presenting summaries of recent decisions and opinions from the New York Appellate Division (all four departments) and the Court of Appeals. The database is updated weekly with summaries of selected decisions, mostly reversals, released the week before. The decisions chosen for summarization are the court’s teaching tools: all substantive Appellate Division reversals, all Appellate Division opinions, all Appellate Division memorandum decisions with substantive dissents, all Court of Appeals opinions, and all substantive Court of Appeals memorandum decisions. More than 15,500 decision-summaries are now in the searchable database, covering every legal category addressed by our appellate courts since January, 2013. Each week’s decision-summaries are organized in Weekly Reversal Reports with a table of contents. Criminal Law, Civil Procedure and Personal Injury decision-summaries are organized in Monthly Reversal Reports with tables of contents. The Monthly Reversal Reports constitute the written materials for the Criminal Law, Civil Procedure and Personal Injury CLE courses presented as podcasts on the site. The links to the Weekly and Monthly Reversal Reports are in the orange-brown panels on the Home Page. The CLE courses are accessed from the Top Menu.

Meet The Writers

Bruce Freeman

Bruce Freeman

Writer and Editor

Bruce Freeman is an attorney who has practiced in Rochester, New York, for over 30 years (general practice with an emphasis on appellate and criminal law). For eight years (2015 – 2023) he was the editor of CasePrepPlus, an appellate-decision digest service offered by the New York State Bar Association, and a contributor to wEbrief, a weekly blog and digest service issued by the General Practice section of the New York State Bar Association. Recent Criminal-Law decision-summaries posted on the New York Appellate Digest website are also posted on the New York Prosecutors Training Institute (NYPTI) website (accessed on that site under “NYPTI Law” in the top menu). Bruce earned a Bachelor of Music and a Juris Doctor from the University of Connecticut, and a Master of Arts from Yale University Graduate School. He is a member of the New York and Connecticut bars. He co-authored the Attorney’s Medical Advisor (a six volume medical treatise published by Clark Boardman Callaghan) and has written hundreds of articles for the Daily Record (a legal daily newspaper in Rochester).

Gregg Freeman

Gregg Freeman

Contributing Writer

Gregg Freeman is a 2012 graduate of Vermont Law School’s Master’s program in Environmental Law and Policy (MELP) and is a 2016 graduate of Vermont Law School’s Juris Doctor program. He was an editor for the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law, a Research Associate at Vermont Law School’s Institute for Energy and the Environment, and a Student Ambassador. From 2016 to 2019 Gregg was the Permitting and Regulatory Compliance Manager at Aegis Renewable Energy, a Vermont based solar and wind turbine installer. Gregg is now Project Manager at Norwich Solar Technologies in White River Junction, Vermont. Prior to starting law school, Gregg completed internships for the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships and the New England Clean Energy Council (in Boston) where he researched energy efficiency standards for new public buildings, wrote aspects of a public comment letter on Vermont’s Comprehensive Energy Plan, and assisted in the development of a recommendation for procurement of off-shore wind projects in New England.

Our Goal

To Facilitate Quick Access to the Useful and Instructive Legal Analyses Which Otherwise Remain Hidden Within the 150 to 200 (Sometimes More) Appellate Decisions and Opinions Released Each Week in New York.