The New York Supreme Court, Commercial Division, has announced that two of its judges, Justices Oing and Scarpulla, will participate in a new program strongly encouraging use of hyperlinks in submissions to the Court. The hyperlinks are to be utilized in all affidavits, affirmations, exhibits within those affidavits and affirmations, and memoranda of law that are filed electronically through the New York State Courts Electronic Filing System (“NYSCEF”) for cases that are assigned to Justices Oing and Scarpulla.
With respect to memoranda of law, there are two categories of information that need to be hyperlinked. First, hyperlinks should appear both in the table of authorities and in every instance within the memoranda where a citation is made to any case, statute, or other legal authority. Those hyperlinks can point either to attachments to the brief itself so that the cases are part of the brief document itself, or can point to the Westlaw website and websites of state or Federal courts. Please note that the program does not expressly permit hyperlinks to the Lexis website. Second, hyperlinks should be inserted in each instance where a citation is made to any affirmation, affidavit, or exhibit attached thereto.
With respect to affirmations and affidavits, the exhibits to those documents should be fully text searchable unless impossible (for example, because of the existence of handwriting).
In order to accommodate this new program, the filing deadlines are slightly different for these hyperlinked documents. The deadline for filing a hyperlinked document shall be “by the final return date of the motion …or other deadline fixed by the court, or by no later than the close of business on the third business day after the final filing date provided that by the final filing date the document shall be filed without the bookmarkings or links.”
A size limitation of 15 megabytes has been set for each document. If the document is larger than 15 megabytes due to the volume of documentation attached, the document may be submitted in sections, none of which should exceed 15 megabytes.