The New York State Office of Court Administration issued a request for public comment on Friday, January 31, 2025, on the Commercial Division Advisory Council’s proposal to amend the Preamble to Rules 25–33 of the Commercial Rules (relating to trial preparation and presentation) and to add a new Appendix E containing a model pretrial order. The memorandum prepared by the Advisory Council states that the proposed model pretrial order “seeks to capture, in one document, the critical activities for trial as set out in Commercial Division Rules 27–33 that the Court may require or address in advance of trial, whether before, during or after the final pretrial conference.” The memorandum also notes that use of the model pretrial order is not mandatory, and instead is offered as “a starting point” to promote “further consistency in practices in the Commercial Division statewide while allowing significant flexibility for each Justice to modify the form to incorporate that Justice’s individual rules, preferences and practices.”
The request for public comment is available at https://www.nycourts.gov/LegacyPDFS/rules/comments/pdf/RequestForPublicComment-CommercialDivision-PretrialOrders-013125.pdf. The Commercial Division Advisory Council’s memorandum setting forth the reasons for this proposal is attached to the request for public comment as Exhibit 2.
Credit to Carolyn Nussbaum of Nixon Peabody and William Savino of Rivkin Radler. Both are members of New York’s Commercial Division Advisory Council.
Posted by Doug Toering and Brian Markham of Mantese Honigman, P.C.
