Comments on Recent Cases: October 2026
Credit: John Manard/WikiPortraits, Sayon Camara at Richmond Folk Festival, CC BY-SA 4.0, Oct. 2026.
Part of my work involves reading court decisions to keep abreast of how judges decide the types of cases I handle. Below, I share some thoughts on recent decisions.
Court Affirms Filing Injunction Against Pro Se Plaintiff
Some plaintiffs file so many lawsuits or motions that courts recognize these are unreasonable. Often, such plaintiffs are representing themselves. In that case, a court may grant a motion that prohibits the party from filing anything further without the court’s permission. This motion relieves a defendant of the burden of responding to every single filing of a nuisance litigant.
For example, in a recent case before the state appeals court in Manhattan, the court affirmed the filing injunction against a plaintiff that required him to get court permission before suing a defendant again. The appeals court held that the trial court gave the plaintiff the opportunity to respond before it granted the motion. And it held that the court did not need to explain why it found the plaintiff’s conduct to be so frivolous as to justify the injunction.
In my experience, however, courts are reluctant to grant these injunctions until a plaintiff has repeatedly engaged in frivolous conduct. Courts often have a lot of patience for unrepresented parties.
Cases like this illustrate how courts handle nuisance litigants.
Court Rejects Constitutional Challenge to Pandemic-Era Law Protecting Commercial Tenants
One job of a litigation attorney is to identify the applicable law and agreements and determine whether a party’s conduct violates those terms. But even when it does, a lawyer may argue that there are conflicting rules that could give the client relief. For example, even where a state law says a plaintiff cannot prevail, a lawyer may argue that the law conflicts with the Constitution under this set of facts, and therefore the state law must be set aside.
This kind of challenge arose in a recent case before the state appeals court in Manhattan. Landlords sued business owners, seeking to enforce a guaranty the owners made for their lease payments. The business owners argued that a covid-era law protected them from having to abide by the guaranty. The New York state law was clear, but the landlord argued the law was unconstitutional since it violated the U.S. Constitution’s clause that prohibits states from passing laws that interfered with contracts. The trial court agreed with the landlord and let them continue its lawsuit to enforce the guaranty. The appeals court reversed, however, holding the state law to be constitutional.
Cases like this illustrate how constitutional challenges may provide a means for litigants to avoid the application of a law.