On October 14, 2025, the First Department issued a decision in Cohn v. RTW Retail Winds Acquisition LLC, 2025 NY Slip Op. 05626, holding that a court could not find defendants in contempt when personal jurisdiction was in doubt, explaining:
Supreme Court’s order finding the individual defendants in contempt is based on their noncompliance with orders entered before jurisdictional issues were resolved. It is undisputed that although plaintiff served the individual defendants at addresses located in Brooklyn, the driver’s licenses submitted by those individual defendants, though redacted, showed that they were then New Jersey residents. The competing averments concerning their residence at the time of service warranted a traverse hearing, which was never held. The individual defendants’ appearance in opposition to plaintiff’s motion for a default judgment did not confer jurisdiction because they raised the jurisdictional defect in their papers. As a result, because Supreme Court did not have jurisdiction when it entered the orders, the orders cannot form the basis for a finding of contempt.
(Internal citations omitted).