Hamrick v Perdue
2008 NY Slip Op 09835 [57 AD3d 317]
December 16, 2008
Appellate Division, First Department
Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431.
As corrected through Wednesday, February 11, 2009


Kenneth Hamrick, Appellant,
v
Roland P. Perdue, III, et al., Respondents.

[*1] Jonathan B. Altschuler, New York, for appellant.

Jackson Lewis LLP, Melville (Roger H. Briton of counsel), for Roland P. Perdue, III and Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, respondents.

Montfort, Healy, McGuire & Salley, Garden City (Donald S. Neumann, Jr. of counsel), for The Presbytery of New York City, respondent.

Order, Supreme Court, New York County (Walter B. Tolub, J.), entered May 29, 2008, which denied plaintiff's motion for summary judgment and an immediate trial of the issue of damages and granted defendants' cross motions for summary judgment dismissing the complaint, unanimously affirmed, without costs.

In this defamation action, defendants met their burden of showing that defendant Perdue's statements that plaintiff misrepresented his academic credentials in connection with his employment by defendant Presbytery were true (see Silverman v Clark, 35 AD3d 1, 12 [2006]). Plaintiff failed to raise a triable issue as to the falsity of the statements (see id. at 13).

Perdue's statement to church staff and choir members that the "resulting lack of credibility and trust toward [plaintiff] caused by this matter has rippled through [the church and choir staff] and beyond" was made in the context of explaining why plaintiff had been terminated and was an expression of opinion, not fact (see Mann v Abel, 10 NY3d 271, 276 [2008]; Galasso v Saltzman, 42 AD3d 310, 311 [2007]).

We have considered plaintiff's remaining argument and find it unavailing. Concur—Andrias, J.P., Nardelli, Sweeny, DeGrasse and Freedman, JJ.