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Proposed Legislation by the City Bar

A unique aspect of being a member of a City Bar committee is the ability to propose legislation.  Committee members are able to influence policy by drawing on their expertise to make recommendations to amend and improve the law.  This session, our committees have been particularly active in drafting legislation, providing proposed amendments to the art and cultural affairs law, criminal procedure law, and human rights law, to name a few.  The Legislative Affairs Department works with committees to find sponsors for their proposals, and once the legislation is introduced, we work with committees to advocate for the bill’s passage, finding support from other legislators, relevant organizations and the public. 

  • The Committees on Professional Responsibility, Arbitration and Alternative Dispute Resolution proposed legislation to address a deficiency in Judiciary Law Sections 475 and 475-a (collectively, the “Lien Law”), which govern an attorney’s ability to attach a charging lien to a client’s monetary recovery.  As currently written, the Lien Law only permits an attorney to attach a charging lien to a client’s recovery in an “action, special or other proceeding in any court or before any state, municipal or federal department, except a department of labor.”  An attorney may not attach a lien to the proceeds of any recovery obtained as the result of arbitration, mediation, or any pre-litigation negotiated settlement.  The Committees’ proposal would put private settlements and alternative dispute resolution ("ADR") on the same footing for practitioners as court-initiated litigation, encouraging both out-of-court settlements and ADR.  This legislation has been introduced as A.5275/S.1546 and the Committees are advocating for the bill’s passage.
  • The Criminal Justice Operations Committee proposed amendments to the  Criminal Procedure Law (CPL) to establish enhanced venue provisions for the offenses of identity theft, unlawful possession of personal identification information, and crimes closely related thereto.  The Committee’s proposal permits the underlying identity theft crimes “together with an additional offense or offenses arising from the same criminal transaction” to be prosecuted in the county where the offense – or part of the offense - took place, in the county in which the person who suffered financial loss resided at the time of the offense, or in the county where the person whose personal identification information was used resided at the time of the offense.  The bill has been introduced in the legislature as A.5440/S.885 and has passed the Senate.
  • The Civil Rights, Legal Issues Pertaining to Animals and Legal Issues Affecting People with Disabilities Committees proposed amendments  to New York’s Human Rights Law (SHRL) which would replace the current definition of “service animal” with a definition consistent with the Americans with Disabilities Act.  This legislation was recently introduced by Assembly Member Benedetto (A.6816) and the committees issued a follow-up report in support of the bill.
  • The Art Law Committee proposed legislation to address certain deficiencies in provisions of the New York Arts and Cultural Affairs Law (NYACAL) that are applicable to consignments of works of art to art merchants by artists, their heirs and their personal representatives.  The proposed amendments are intended to give teeth to the existing trust property and trust fund provisions of Articles 11 and 12 of NYACAL by ensuring that children and heirs of an artist in certain cases qualify for the protections governing consignments and making it explicit that works of art consigned by artists, craftspeople, their heirs and personal representatives to art merchants are not, and shall not become, the property of the art merchant, or the art merchant’s bankruptcy estate.  This bill was recently introduced by Assembly Member Bing (A.7189).
  • The Committee on Condemnation and Tax Certiorari proposed amendments to §11-216 of the New York City Administrative Code that would change the actual assessed value of properties that are required to submit certified income and expense statements from “one million dollars or more” to “three million dollars or more”.  This change is necessary to account for increasing costs of properties and increased costs of obtaining a certified statement by a certified public accountant since the law was first adopted in 1968.  The proposal has been forwarded to the City Council.
  • The Criminal Justice Operations Committee has proposed two additional pieces of legislation in recent months.  The first proposal would allow assigned appellate lawyers, or ‘18-b lawyers’, to receive compensation for filing meritorious post-conviction motions and for drafting and filing papers in support of such motions.  Currently, 18-b lawyers are not statutorily-entitled to compensation; the practical result of this funding restriction is that many potentially meritorious motions under Article 440 of the CPL are not pursued.
      The second proposal is a series of three bills which would enhance the existing statutory framework for the sealing of court records.  The first bill would allow for complete sealing for a defendant whose case was dismissed at arraignment (or earlier) pursuant to CPL §§140.45 and 150.50 where the accusatory instrument was legally insufficient.  The second applies to youths ages 16 to 18 and permits a youthful offender adjudication for those convicted of a petty offense (i.e. a violation or a traffic infraction) and would provide for an automatic, complete sealing of such adjudications upon the defendant's 19th birthday, as is currently the case for youths convicted of misdemeanors.  The third bill applies to defendants convicted of a petty offense and would allow a defendant to apply to the sentencing court, upon notice to the District Attorney's Office, for complete sealing of the conviction following two years from the date of sentence.  We are in discussions with potential sponsors of these bills.
  • The Juvenile Justice Committee proposed legislation which would delete those subdivisions of the Youthful Offender statute that require a judge to find mitigating circumstances before conferring Juvenile Offender status on youths convicted of armed felony.  The proposed bill makes no changes with respect to those crimes that are barred from Youthful Offender consideration.  We are currently seeking a sponsor for this legislation.
    • The Committee on Trusts, Estates and Surrogates’ Courts and the Committee on Estate and Gift Taxation proposed modifications to Section 2-1.13 of the Estates, Powers and Trusts Law (EPTL), which was enacted in 2010 in response to the repeal of the federal estate tax for decedents dying in 2010 and the repeal of the generation-skipping transfer (“GST”) tax in 2010.  The Committees recommended modifications to the statute which would effect consistency in the interpretation of formula clauses (whether an estate is subject to an estate tax or a modified carry-over basis regime), and clarify that formula clauses will be interpreted with reference to a $5,000,000 federal estate and GST tax exemption amount. We are in discussions with a potential sponsor of this bill.

     

    We encourage committees to consider drafting proposed legislation and look forward to working with them to make those proposals a reality.  As we have seen in the past, this may be a lengthy process, but one that is well worth the effort.

     

    April 29, 2011