On August 12, 2025, Justice Masley of the New York County Commercial Division issued an opinion in Glencore Ltd. v. Kamca Trading S.A., 2025 NY Slip Op. 33097(U), imposing a $1,000-per-day fine in order to coerce a party to purge its contempt, explaining:
A court has the power to levy contempt sanctions of sufficient size to coerce compliance with its orders. For example, a fine of $1 million per day was imposed under Judiciary Law § 751(a)(3) in the nature of a coercive, per diem sanction meant to compel Local 100 to alter its conduct to comply with the December 13, 2005, order, e.g. to end the strike and get the transit system up and running. The amount of the judgment itself is an appropriate fine against a co-conspirator where the record reveals an elaborate scheme to defeat the collection of the plaintiffs’ judgment against the appellant’s husband, the judgment-debtor in the underlying action, including the co- conspirator refusing to participate in the judicial process. Fundamentally, once there is a New York judgment on the merits, the courts of this State are entitled to protect it from defendant’s harassing and bad faith foreign litigation. Accordingly, as to the coercive penalty, Kamca Oil, Kamca Holding, Carreira Pitti PC Abogados, and Dr. Francisco Carreira-Pitti shall pay $1,000 per business day joint and several from the date of service of this decision and order with a notice of entry on them until such time as the Panamanian action is withdrawn.
The penalty is payable to plaintiff on a weekly basis. Coercive penalties designed to modify the contemnor’s behavior, generally speaking, are civil in nature, while penalties meant to punish the contemnor for past acts of disobedience are criminal. Thus, a fine is considered civil and remedial if it either coerces the recalcitrant party into compliance with a court order or compensates the claimant for some loss. A coercive fine is particularly appropriate where the order violated directs or bars a particular activity, as opposed to for example, failure to comply with a turnover order of funds to satisfy a judgment.
(Internal quotations and citations omitted).