In Wander v. St. John’s Univ., 2018 NY Slip Op 05353 (App. Div. 2d Dept. July 18, 2018), an age discrimination case, the court held that plaintiffs should be permitted to supplement the complaint to, inter alia, enumerate their damages related to the termination of their employment.
From the decision:
In the absence of prejudice or surprise to the opposing party, leave to amend a pleading should be freely granted unless the proposed amendment is palpably insufficient or patently devoid of merit” (Mannino v Wells Fargo Home Mtge., Inc., 155 AD3d 860, 862; see CPLR 3025[b]). The determination to permit or deny amendment is committed to the sound discretion of the trial court (see CPLR 3025[b]; Edenwald Contr. Co. v City of New York, 60 NY2d 957, 959). While a proposed amendment generally is considered patently devoid of merit if it is time-barred under the applicable statute of limitations (see Ricca v Valenti, 24 AD3d 647, 648; Quinto v New York City Tr. Auth., 7 AD3d 689), contrary to the defendants’ contention, the plaintiffs’ proposed amendments, which enumerate damages, are not time-barred. Further, under the circumstances of this case, the defendants cannot show prejudice or surprise, given their own prior acknowledgment in their reply memorandum of law in support of their motion to dismiss the complaint that at the core of the plaintiffs’ “grievances in this case is the disciplinary process that resulted in their suspension without pay, the revocation of tenure, and their discharge.”
Therefore, the court held that the Supreme Court properly exercised its discretion in granting the plaintiffs’ motion pursuant to CPLR 3017 and 3025 for leave to supplement the complaint.