On September 17, 2025, the Second Department issued a decision in PennyMac Corp. v. Dean-Phillips, 2025 NY Slip Op. 05002, holding that general claims of attorney unavailability were an insufficient justification to vacate a default judgment, explaining:
A party seeking to vacate an order entered upon his or her default in opposing a motion for summary judgment must demonstrate both a reasonable excuse for the default and a potentially meritorious opposition to the motion. While CPLR 2005 allows courts to excuse a default due to law office failure, it was not the Legislature’s intent to routinely excuse such defaults, and mere neglect will not be accepted as a reasonable excuse. Although a court has discretion to accept ill health of a litigant’s attorney as an acceptable excuse for a default, a conclusory and unsubstantiated claim of ill health should be rejected.
Here, the affirmation of the defendant’s prior counsel, in which she averred, without supporting proof, that the default occurred when she was out of her office for several months due to being diagnosed with a serious illness and multiple bereavement [sic] in her family, failed to establish a reasonable excuse for the defendant’s default. Since the defendant failed to establish a reasonable excuse for his default, it is unnecessary to consider whether he sufficiently demonstrated the existence of potentially meritorious opposition to the plaintiff’s motion.
(Internal quotations and citations omitted).