author: Chief Judge Lippman. Fahey, J.

text:
    [30 NE3d 865, 8 NYS3d 222]
    The People of the State of New York, Respondent, v Lee Carr, Appellant. The People of the State of New York, Respondent, v Walter Cates, Sr., Appellant.
    Argued February 10, 2015;
    decided April 2, 2015

      POINTS OF COUNSEL

      Seymour W. James, Jr., The Legal Aid Society, New York City (Andrew C. Fine, Amy Donner and Scott A. Rosenberg of counsel), for appellant in the first above-entitled action.
    Appellant was denied his right to counsel at material stages of trial where the court, over defense objection, excluded defense counsel from two off-the-record in camera examinations of the main prosecution witness addressing the witness’s mental and medical capacity to testify. (People v Contreras, 12 NY3d 268; People v Frost, 100 NY2d 129; People v Darby, 75 NY2d 449; People v Ortega, 78 NY2d 1101; People v Goggins, 34 NY2d 163; People v Rosario, 9 NY2d 286; People v Combest, 4 NY3d 341; Kentucky v Stincer, 482 US 730; People v Morales, 80 NY2d 450; People v Sprowal, 84 NY2d 113.)

      Robert S. Dean, Center for Appellate Litigation, New York City (Bruce D. Austern of counsel), for appellant in the second above-entitled action.
    Appellant was denied his right to counsel at material stages of trial where the court, over defense objection, excluded defense counsel from two off-the-record in camera examinations of the main prosecution witness addressing the witness’s mental and medical capacity to testify. (People v Contreras, 12 NY3d 268; People v Frost, 100 NY2d 129; People v Darby, 75 NY2d 449; People v Ortega, 78 NY2d 1101; People v Goggins, 34 NY2d 163; People v Rosario, 9 NY2d 286; People v Combest, 4 NY3d 341; Kentucky v Stincer, 482 US 730; People v Morales, 80 NY2d 450; People v Sprowal, 84 NY2d 113.)

      Robert T. Johnson, District Attorney, Bronx (Melanie A. Sarver, Joseph N. Ferdenzi and Peter D. Coddington of counsel), for respondent in the first and second above-entitled actions.
    The trial court’s in camera examination of prosecution witness Gary Rose was not a material part of trial that required the presence of defendants or their attorneys. (People v Velasco, 77 NY2d 469; People v Aguilera, 82 NY2d 23; People v Antommarchi, 80 NY2d 247; People v Fabricio, 3 NY3d 402; People v Smith, 82 NY2d 254; People v Spotford, 85 NY2d 593; People v Darby, 75 NY2d 449; People v Frost, 100 NY2d 129; People v Contreras, 12 NY3d 268; People v Brown, 195 AD2d 967.)
   OPINION OF THE COURT

Chief Judge Lippman.

The primary issue presented by these appeals is whether the court violated defendants’ right to counsel by holding an in camera proceeding without counsel present to discuss with the People’s main witness the witness’s mental and physical ability to testify. Because, under these facts, the witness’s mental and physical health were inextricably tied to his credibility, a nonministerial issue for trial, we hold that the court violated defendants’ right to counsel by denying defense counsel access to the proceeding.

Codefendants Lee Carr and Walter Cates, Sr., were convicted of second-degree murder for acting in concert with three others to kill Matharr Cham, who was beaten and strangled. It was Gary Rose who was the People’s main witness. For 30 years, Rose had been a regular user of crack cocaine and methadone, and he leased the apartment where the murder took place. At trial, Rose testified that he was in the apartment when Carr and Cates, Sr., beat Cham, strangled him, and placed his body in the bathtub; that defendant Carr told him to stay in his room; that he dozed off before hearing muffled sounds in the other room where Cham had been sitting, and later saw Cham’s body in the bathtub with an extension cord tied around his neck. Carr and Cates, Sr., contended that the others had killed Cham.

During trial, Rose failed to appear twice, first on April 22, 2009, and again on April 27, 2009. The first time, Rose appeared after trial was adjourned and the People sent investigators to look for him. The court questioned him in camera to determine why he was late. The substance of that first discussion is mostly unknown. Defense attorneys requested that they be present during any potential, future proceeding with the witness to discuss the reasons for Mr. Rose’s failure to appear, that any records of medical attention given to the witness be disclosed because of the witness’s history of abusing drugs, and that the proceedings be transcribed. Instead, after Gary Rose failed to appear the second time, the court held an in camera, off-the-record discussion with the witness to ascertain the extent of the witness’s illness and when he would be able to testify. Supreme Court relayed the discussion to defense counsel, stating that the witness was “in bad shape,” that he was suffering from a migraine and needed a half day to recover, and that he denied he was suffering from alcohol abuse or affected by crack cocaine, stating:

“THE COURT: . . . For the record, on Wednesday shortly after I dismissed the juries, we got word that Mr. Gary Rose, who was supposed to be here first thing Wednesday, arrived ... I asked the People to have him brought over here to find out why he was late ... He seemed to be in bad shape . . . This morning, I’ve received a phone call from [the prosecutor] stating that although Mr. Rose was here, he was in no condition to testify. We had a discussion amongst the DA and the defense lawyers at the bench. I’ve instructed everyone that I was going to speak to him in camera which I did off the record . . . this morning. He informed me that he suffers from migraines [and] that he needed a half a day to recover. And I asked him if he was on drugs. He said, no. I asked him if he was suffering from any alcohol problem. He said, no. I asked him if he’s on crack. He said, no. And he said he would be ready to go tomorrow . . .
“[WALTER CATES’ COUNSEL]: ... I think the Court agrees that there was an [sic] unanimous decision of the three defense lawyers that we wish[ed] to be present with our clients when the Court did the inquiry of Mr. Rose. When that was denied, we wishfed] that the inquiry by the Court go on the record which was also denied. This was a request before the Court conducted the independent inquiry . . . We were made aware today of the Court’s inquiry from Wednesday. If that was on the record, as well, we would like copies of that transcript. . . We would like to know what excuses he gave for not showing up on that day . . . Mr. Rose indicated he was a regular user of Methadone and a regular user of crack cocaine.”

Carr’s counsel joined in the objection, after which Supreme Court responded:

“THE COURT: ... I don’t think there is any legal requirement for my discussions with him on . . . Wednesday or today to be on the record. Obviously, defense counsel will . . . have a full range of cross examination. They can cross why he wasn’t here . . . the jury is going to find out that we’ve been sitting around waiting for him. . . .
“[WALTER CATES’S COUNSEL]: The District Attorney argues . . . that the fact that he’s not present is irrelevant to us . . . the People want to say that he was just late. ... I dispute their characterization of that. . . .
“THE COURT: Again, you can cross.
“[WALTER CATES’S COUNSEL]: I don’t know anything about it. . . The District Attorney’s office interviewed him. The Court spoke to him. I have no records of either of this. If he gets on the stand and says something different from either what he told them or told you . . . Only the Court would know and only the DA’s Office will know . . .
“THE COURT: Yeah. But I told you that he . . . [had] a . . . migraine. And he needed 12 hours to recover ... He also said he was not on any drugs or alcohol today.
“[WALTER CATES’S COUNSEL]: Did he say last Wednesday he had a migraine?
“THE COURT: ... I didn’t ask him about his physical condition last Wednesday.
“[WALTER CATES’S COUNSEL]: In the Court’s opinion, this morning, you thought last Wednesday he looked worse [?] . . . Did he look tired?
“THE COURT: He looked tired, disheveled and much more hyper than he is today.
“[WALTER CATES’S COUNSEL]: Like someone who might be withdrawing from Methadone?
“THE COURT: I can’t say . . . It’s not fair for me to say.”

The Appellate Division affirmed defendant Carr’s conviction, discounting the significance of the in camera proceeding involving Gary Rose. It concluded that it “was not a hearing, nor part of the trial, and it did not involve the determination of any issue requiring input from defendant or his counsel” (People v Carr, 111 AD3d 472, 472 [1st Dept 2013]). The Court found that defendant Carr was not prejudiced by the conference being unrecorded nor was he impaired in his “ability to cross-examine this witness about all matters relating to his credibility, including drug abuse” (id.). Therefore defendant’s right to counsel was not violated (id.). The Appellate Division separately affirmed Cates’s conviction (People v Cates, 92 AD3d 553 [1st Dept 2012]).

A Judge of this Court granted leave to appeal (23 NY3d 1019 [2014]; 22 NY3d 1155 [2014]) and we now reverse the orders in each case and remit for new trials.

Absent a substantial justification, courts must not examine witnesses about nonministerial matters in camera without counsel present or ex parte (see People v Contreras, 12 NY3d 268, 273 [2009]; People v Goggins, 34 NY2d 163, 173 [1974]). “[A]n in-camera examination of the witnesses, that is ex parte or without the parties represented would, in our view, arguably trifle with the constitutional right to confrontation and the right to counsel” (Goggins, 34 NY2d at 169). A “defendant’s right to the full benefit of the adversary system should not be denied, nor qualified by impairing his right by interposing the ‘neutral’ Judge to assess whether the disclosure is relevant or material” (id.). Goggins concerned a defendant’s right to disclosure of an informant’s identity, and this Court held that where the information “relates to a substantive issue in the case, the disclosure should not be ex parte or without either party present even if in camera” (id. at 173).

“[E]x parte proceedings are undesirable, and they should be rare” (Contreras, 12 NY3d at 273). In Contreras, an ex parte proceeding was substantially justified during the court’s review of a rape victim’s notes that described an erotic relationship the victim was having with someone other than the defendant, the victim’s husband (see id. at 271). Because of the inflammatory and private nature of the notes, and the fact that they would likely fall under the protection of the Rape Shield Law, the court held an ex parte proceeding to determine first if they were Rosario or Brady material, during which the court confirmed the notes were irrelevant (see id.). After finding that the victim “might have been warranted in fearing worse than embarrassment if the contents of the document had been communicated to defendant” because the notes revealed a romantic relationship with another man, the “initial consideration of the question must be ex parte, almost by its nature” as “the court can hardly disclose the document before deciding whether to order it disclosed” (id. at 273). There, the “hearing was not only noncritical, but, as a matter of law, unnecessary,” and thus the ex parte nature of the proceeding was both justified by the irrelevant information discussed and by the safety concerns of the victim (id.).

In People v Frost, the court excluded defense counsel from a pretrial hearing to decide the People’s motion to mask the identities of witnesses and also from four proceedings to determine whether the courtroom should be closed to protect witnesses’ identities (100 NY2d 129, 132-133 [2003]). Where substantive issues for trial are being discussed, the Court stressed that “ex parte hearings are not to be granted lightly and are unwarranted and impermissible in the vast majority of cases” (id. at 134).

In People v Vargas, this Court upheld the exclusion of defense counsel from a conference to discuss a potential juror’s fear of the defendant prior to voir dire (88 NY2d 363 [1996]). There, the trial court evaluated the juror’s fear for his safety outside the presence of defense counsel and found it to be genuine (see id. at 379). In People v Castillo, an informant’s fear justified the court’s ex parte proceeding to determine whether to disclose the informer’s identity or statements (80 NY2d 578, 586 [1992], cert denied 507 US 1033 [1993]).

In People v Ortega, the trial court held a conference properly described as an in camera proceeding by the Appellate Division to request that a prosecution witness identify a confidential informant (78 NY2d 1101, 1102 [1991]). The proceeding was closed to defense counsel and all parties, and no record was taken “to show what was said in chambers or whether it contributed to the court’s decision that disclosure was not required” (78 NY2d at 1102-1103). Because the witness may have “stated an unrebutted view of the facts which influenced the trial court in reaching its subsequent decision,” the Court found the inquiry violated defendant’s rights (id.). In Kentucky v Stincer, the United States Supreme Court permitted the exclusion of the defendant from a proceeding testing the competency of two child witnesses in a sexual abuse case, holding that the exclusion did not violate the Confrontation Clause (482 US 730, 739-744 [1987]). Critically, defense counsel was present at the proceeding, asked questions, and the proceeding was transcribed, which allowed defense counsel to repeat the same questions during cross-examination at trial (id. at 739-740).

“[S]ince most constitutional rights are not self-executing, the right to counsel may be the most basic of all” (People v Hodge, 53 NY2d 313, 317 [1981]). “[I]n criminal cases in particular we have called for the highest degree of vigilance in safeguarding the right of an accused to have the assistance of an attorney at every stage of the legal proceedings against him” (id. at 317-318 [internal quotation marks and citation omitted]). In Hodge, the trial court insisted that the defendant proceed without retained counsel where defense counsel had not arrived “after adequate time” to a preindictment preliminary hearing (id. at 316-317). The People asserted there that because the defendant was subsequently indicted, there was no harm and “any infirmities that occurred at the flawed hearing may be excused” (id. at 319). This Court responded that “the test must be not what the hearing did not produce, but what it might have produced if the defendant’s right to counsel had not been ignored” (id. at 321). “[T]he result of such inquiry would have to be pure speculation” (id.).

The denial of the right to counsel at trial “is of constitutional dimension” and is not subject to harmless error analysis (Hodge, 53 NY2d at 320; People v Hilliard, 73 NY2d 584, 587 [1989]). Courts should not delve into questions of prejudice when assistance of counsel is involved (see People v Felder, 47 NY2d 287, 291 [1979]; Perry v Leeke, 488 US 272, 280 [1989]). As this Court recognized, “[t]he right to have the assistance of counsel is too fundamental and absolute to allow courts to indulge in nice calculations as to the amount of prejudice arising from its denial” (Felder, 47 NY2d at 296 [internal quotation marks and citation omitted]). And as this Court held in Hodge, a quantification of what impeachment material defense counsel might have obtained at the proceeding cannot be dispositive {see 53 NY2d at 321), as harmless error does not apply in right-to-counsel cases {see Perry, 488 US at 280).

Here, the in camera proceeding clearly involved substantive issues as opposed to ministerial matters and there was no justification for excluding defense counsel. Because the discussion involved important issues for trial that might have affected a “substantial right” of a party, defense counsels’ presence was required (see Rules Governing Judicial Conduct [22 NYCRR] § 100.3 [B] [6] [a]; Contreras, 12 NY3d at 273; Gog-gins, 34 NY2d at 173). Mr. Rose was the People’s star witness. When he failed to appear the first time, the People dispatched investigators to look for him. He then appeared, two hours late, after which the trial judge interviewed him in camera without counsel present, describing his appearance later as “tired,” “disheveled,” and “hyper.” When the trial judge conveyed the content of his conversation to the defense attorneys, they all requested to be present if and when the court interviewed the witness again regarding his potential future absences. Indeed, they had a very good reason to suspect that the witness’s absences were caused by his use of crack cocaine and methadone, which could potentially constitute impeachment material critical to defendants’ ability to defend. That request was denied. When the witness failed to appear on the next court date, the judge again interviewed him in camera and observed that he was in no condition to testify. The record belies the People’s contention that the second proceeding was a simple meeting to discuss scheduling. By the second interview, it was no longer a mere scheduling matter. The proceeding involved what caused Mr. Rose to be in such “bad shape” that he failed to testify twice. Unlike a “purely administrative, ministerial question” (see dissenting op at 116), the court’s discussion with Mr. Rose concerned potentially significant evidence that defense counsel may have found useful during cross-examination at trial. The trial court should have been alerted to this possibility based on Mr. Rose’s suspicious and questionable appearance and demeanor, of which the court took note, when he arrived several hours late on the first day that he was scheduled to testify. Indeed, the court knew that there was serious reason to doubt the veracity of Mr. Rose’s migraine explanation because the court asked him whether he was “on drugs,” “suffering from any alcohol problem,” or was “on crack.”

As this Court held in Contreras and Goggins, courts should rarely exclude defense counsel from a proceeding with a witness where the court has reason to believe that the matter falls outside of the permissible ex parte communications for scheduling and administrative purposes, as it did here (see 12 NY3d at 273; 34 NY2d at 173). If the dissent’s characterization of the in camera discussion were correct — had the discussion been merely about scheduling — the Rules Governing Judicial Conduct authorizing ex parte communications for scheduling or administrative matters would apply, and the trial court would have been acting within its discretion to manage its docket. As the in camera discussion concerned a witness’s health (both mental and physical) and credibility, issues the court knew defense counsel would address during cross-examination of the witness at trial, it was much more than a scheduling matter, and it violated defendants’ right to counsel for Supreme Court to deny defense counsel physical access to the proceeding and to refuse to create a record of the proceeding for use in cross-examination (see Contreras, 12 NY3d at 273; Goggins, 34 NY2d at 173; Frost, 100 NY2d at 134; Ortega, 78 NY2d at 1102; Stincer, 482 US at 745).

Accordingly, in each case, the order of the Appellate Division should be reversed and a new trial ordered.

Fahey, J.

(dissenting). The trial court conducted an in camera interview with a prosecution witness to ascertain whether his migraine was too debilitating for him to testify that day. The court granted an adjournment, for a second time, and the witness testified the next day. Now, the majority, holding that this was reversible error, grants defendants a new trial, because the interview “concerned potentially significant evidence that defense counsel may have found useful during cross-examination at trial” (majority op at 113). In my view, the in camera inquiry here was permissible because it was merely ministerial. Accordingly, I dissent.

Initially, I agree that it is appropriate for the Court to consider precedents concerning ex parte hearings here, because the in camera questioning of the witness occurred after the prosecutor called the trial judge to inform him that the witness was in her office but in no condition to testify, and it took place in the absence of defense counsel. However, the majority strays far from those precedents. In People v Frost (100 NY2d 129 [2003]), in which we upheld the closure of a courtroom following an ex parte proceeding, we simply observed that “ex parte hearings are not to be granted lightly and are unwarranted and impermissible in the vast majority of cases” (id. at 134). We noted that avoidance of ex parte hearings, while not always required, is “the better practice” (id.). More recently, we have stated that “ex parte proceedings are undesirable, and they should be rare” (People v Contreras, 12 NY3d 268, 273 [2009]). Until today, we simply recommended that ex parte hearings remain rare; now, for the first time, a showing of “substantial justification” (majority op at 110) is required.

This Court has never held that conducting an in camera inquiry on a scheduling matter violates a defendant’s right to counsel. In fact, it tries to avoid that conclusion today, by limiting its holding to in camera or ex parte inquiries “about non-ministerial matters” (majority op at 110). No party has the right to control the scheduling of litigation. That is the court’s prerogative. Preventing trial courts from controlling the scheduling of witnesses in camera will interfere with a court’s exercise of its discretion to oversee the management of a trial and ensure its fair and orderly conduct. Indeed, the Rules Governing Judicial Conduct expressly state that

“[e]x parte communications that are made for scheduling or administrative purposes and that do not affect a substantial right of any party are authorized, provided the judge reasonably believes that no party will gain a procedural or tactical advantage as a result of the ex parte communication, and the judge, insofar as practical and appropriate, makes provision for prompt notification of other parties or their lawyers of the substance of the ex parte communication and allows an opportunity to respond” (22 NYCRR 100.3 [B] [6] [a]).

Here, notably, the trial court complied with 22 NYCRR 100.3, promptly placing detailed information on the record about what had occurred at the ex parte inquiry, and ensuring that defense counsel was subsequently able to cross-examine the witness extensively on matters relating to his credibility.

No guidance is offered to trial courts as to when a matter qualifies as ministerial. The in camera inquiry in the present case involved questioning on a purely administrative, ministerial question: whether a witness was so ill, from a migraine, that he would be unable to testify on a particular day. As the Appellate Division noted, the trial court’s “inquiry was not a hearing, nor part of the trial, and it did not involve the determination of any issue requiring input from defendant or his counsel” (People v Carr, 111 AD3d 472, 472 [1st Dept 2013]). The inquiry simply resulted in a witness’s appearance being delayed from one day to the next. If this interview was not ministerial, then nothing is.

The attempt to defend classification of the trial court’s interview as non-ministerial by postulating that it “concerned potentially significant evidence that defense counsel may have found useful during cross-examination at trial” (majority op at 113) fails because this may be said of any request for adjournment. Whenever one party seeks rescheduling of a witness’s testimony, there is a potential that an inquiry into the reasons will reveal information that the other party “may” find “useful.” This test is so weak that it is no test at all.

Competent counsel will now invariably argue that a scheduling matter is not ministerial and that his or her client has a right to know why the witness claims to be unable to testify. This will occur even when the witness’s indisposition relates to a trivial, personal and private condition. This decision creates a standard that will be impossible to administer. Commonly, the trial court will be forced to hold a full-blown hearing to decide a matter that demands quick resolution. All parties to criminal litigation — not just the prosecution but defendants as well — will suffer from this cumbersome new process.

I would affirm the order of the Appellate Division in each case.

Judges Read, Rivera, Abdus-Salaam and Stein concur; Judge Fahey dissents in an opinion in which Judge Pigott concurs.

In each case: Order reversed and a new trial ordered.

       Surveillance video shows Cates, Sr., helping to dispose of the body.


source: Caselaw Access Project

author: Rivera, J.

license: Public Domain

text:
    [30 NE3d 872, 8 NYS3d 229]
    Joseph Saint et al., Appellants, v Syracuse Supply Company, Respondent.
    Argued February 12, 2015;
    decided April 2, 2015

      POINTS OF COUNSEL

      Paul William Beltz, PC., Buffalo (Timothy M. Hudson and Debra A. Norton of counsel), for appellants.
    I. The Munoz v DJZ Realty, LLC (5 NY3d 747 [2005]) wallpaper analogy has no relevance to the superflex vinyl on a massive, freestanding billboard. (LaFontaine v Albany Mgt., 257 AD2d 319; Samuel v Simone Dev. Co., 13 AD3d 112; Vasquez v Skyline Constr. & Restoration Corp., 8 AD3d 473, 3 NY3d 611; Steves v Campus Indus., 288 AD2d 914; Lawyer v Rotterdam Ventures, 204 AD2d 878; Quinn v Fisher Dev., 272 AD2d 106; Kadoic v 1154 First Ave. Tenants Corp., 277 AD2d 66; LaGiudice v Sleepy’s Inc., 67 AD3d 969; Zgoba v Easy Shopping Corp., 246 AD2d 539; Da
      har v Holland Ladder & Mfg. Co., 18 NY3d 521.) II. The addition being built on the existing structure was an alteration as defined by this Court. (Munoz v DJZ Realty, LLC, 5 NY3d 747; Joblon v Solow, 91 NY2d 457; Weininger v Hagedorn & Co., 91 NY2d 958; Sanatass v Consolidated Inv. Co., Inc., 10 NY3d 333; Morales v D & A Food Serv., 10 NY3d 911; Belding v Verizon N.Y., Inc., 14 NY3d 751; Vasquez v C2 Dev. Corp., 105 AD3d 729; Lucas v Fulton Realty Partners, LLC, 60 AD3d 1004; Santiago v Rusciano & Son, Inc., 92 AD3d 585; Rico-Castro v Do & Co N.Y. Catering, Inc., 60 AD3d 749.) III. Neither Labor Law § 241 (6) nor § 240 (2) limit themselves to “altering” and those claims were improperly dismissed. (Joblon v Solow, 91 NY2d 457; Jock v Fien, 80 NY2d 965; Hotaling v Corning Inc., 12 AD3d 1064.)

      Gibson, McAskill & Crosby, LLP, Buffalo (Brian P. Crosby and Timothy J. Graber of counsel), for respondent.
    I. The Appellate Division correctly determined based on well settled jurisprudence that plaintiff was not altering a building or structure and that he was not engaged in construction work. (Joblon v Solow, 91 NY2d 457; Munoz v DJZ Realty, LLC, 15 AD3d 363, 5 NY3d 747; Maes v 408 W. 39 LLC, 24 AD3d 298; Kretzschmar v New York State Urban Dev. Corp., 13 AD3d 270, 5 NY3d 703; Bodtman v Living Manor Love, Inc., 105 AD3d 434; Della Croce v City of New York, 297 AD2d 257; Zolfaghari v Hughes Network Sys., LLC, 99 AD3d 1234; Hatfield v Bridge-dale, LLC, 28 AD3d 608; Nagel v D & R Realty Corp., 99 NY2d 98; Bryant v General Elec. Co., 221 AD2d 687.) II. The memorandum and order appealed from is based on sound public policy. (Joblon v Solow, 91 NY2d 457.) III. Affirming the Fourth Department would not expand Munoz v DJZ Realty, LLC (5 NY3d 747 [2005]).

      McGaw, Alventosa & Zajac, Jericho {Andrew Zajac and Dawn C. DeSimone of counsel), and Gary A. Rome, New York City, Roña L. Platt, Oakland Gardens, David B. Hamm, New York City and Jonathan T. Uejio, New York City, for Defense Association of New York, Inc., amicus curiae.
    I. This Court should reject plaintiffs’ attempt to restrict the application of Munoz v DJZ Realty, LLC (5 NY3d 747 [2005]). (Joblon v Solow, 91 NY2d 457; Schapp v Bloomer, 181 NY 125; Jock v Fien, 80 NY2d 965; Soto v J. Crew Inc., 21 NY3d 562; Dakar v Holland Ladder & Mfg. Co., 18 NY3d 521; Brown v Christopher St. Owners Corp., 87 NY2d 938; Connors v Boorstein, 4 NY2d 172; Esposito v New York City Indus. Dev. Agency, 1 NY3d 526; Abbatiello v Lancaster Studio Assoc., 3 NY3d 46; Martinez v City

      of New York, 93 NY2d 322.) II. Where plaintiff was injured while replacing advertisement copy on a billboard in such a manner as to not significantly alter the physical configuration of the structure, this Court’s precedent mandates rejection of plaintiffs effort to expand the scope of Labor Law § 240 (1) to include any activity that results in a change to a building or structure. (Munoz v DJZ Realty, LLC, 5 NY3d 747; Panek v County of Albany, 99 NY2d 452; Chizh v Hillside Campus Meadows Assoc., LLC, 3 NY3d 664; Gibson v Worthington Div. of McGraw-Edison Co., 78 NY2d 1108; Martinez v City of New York, 93 NY2d 322; Prats v Port Auth. of N.Y. & N.J., 100 NY2d 878; Weininger v Hagedorn & Co., 91 NY2d 958; Joblon v Solow, 91 NY2d 457; Cox v International Paper Co., 234 AD2d 757; Amendola v Rheedlen 125th St., LLC, 105 AD3d 426.)

      Michael S. Levine, New York City, for New York State Trial Lawyers Association, amicus curiae.
    I. Constructing an addition onto the existing billboard significantly changed the structure and was not decorative modification. (Misseritti v Mark IV Constr. Co., 86 NY2d 487; Runner v New York Stock Exch., Inc., 13 NY3d 599; Ross v Curtis-Palmer Hydro-Elec. Co., 81 NY2d 494; Bland v Manocherian, 66 NY2d 452; Izrailev v Ficarra Furniture of Long Is., 70 NY2d 813; Joblon v Solow, 91 NY2d 457; Weininger v Hagedorn & Co., 91 NY2d 958; Sanatass v Consolidated Inv. Co., Inc., 10 NY3d 333; Belding v Verizon N.Y., Inc., 14 NY3d 751; Custer v Jordan, 107 AD3d 1555.) II. The scope of the work was not “temporary,” and this Court already has rejected similar temporal arguments as a basis to deny application of the Labor Law. (Smith v Shell Oil Co., 85 NY2d 1000; Izrailev v Ficarra Furniture of Long Is., 70 NY2d 813; Panek v County of Albany, 286 AD2d 86, 99 NY2d 452.) III. Joseph Saint was engaged in “construction work” and is entitled to the protections of Labor Law § 241 (6). (Munoz v DJZ Realty, LLC, 5 NY3d 747; Ross v Curtis-Palmer Hydro-Elec. Co., 81 NY2d 494; Allen v Cloutier Constr. Corp., 44 NY2d 290; Nostrom v A.W. Chesterton Co., 15 NY3d 502; Joblon v Solow, 91 NY2d 457; Jock v Fien, 80 NY2d 965; Hotaling v Corning Inc., 12 AD3d 1064; Samiento v World Yacht Inc., 10 NY3d 70; Matter of Gaines v New York State Div. of Hous. & Community Renewal, 90 NY2d 545; Nagel v D & R Realty Corp., 99 NY2d 98.)
   OPINION OF THE COURT

Rivera, J.

Plaintiffs Joseph Saint and his wife Sheila Saint challenge the dismissal of their claims arising from work-related injuries Joseph Saint suffered while he was engaged in the installation and removal of a billboard advertisement. We conclude that because plaintiffs work required the attachment, at an elevated height, of custom-made wooden extensions that changed the dimensions of the billboard frame, plaintiff was engaged in alteration of the structure within the meaning of Labor Law § 240 (1). Moreover, he properly asserted claims for unprotected construction work under Labor Law §§ 240 (2) and 241 (6) based on the lack of a guardrail on the billboard platform. Therefore, we reverse the dismissal of his complaint.

According to the undisputed facts, on the day of his injury plaintiff Joseph Saint was part of a three-person construction crew working to replace an advertisement on a billboard located in Erie County. The billboard is elevated approximately 59 feet from the ground, and composed of a two-sided metal frame constructed in an inverted “V” shape, facing east and west, and set on a metal tube embedded in the ground. Each side of the metal frame is approximately 14 by 48 feet in size, and covered by a series of panels which are secured to the frame by iron clips called “stringers.” Each side accommodates an advertisement made of vinyl material which is attached to the panels with ratchet straps.

The billboard has six catwalks used by workers when removing and installing advertisements. Two catwalks are located on the exterior, one on each side of the metal frame. The other four catwalks are located on the interior of the V frame, with a lower and upper catwalk on each side, set 10 feet apart vertically. Workers access the upper and lower catwalks by a ladder elevated several feet from the ground and attached externally to the metal tube. All the catwalks have safety cables, but only the platform connecting the two exterior catwalks has a guardrail.

Plaintiff and the other members of the construction crew were working on the installation of a new advertisement which necessitated the attachment of additions to the existing frame. These additions are referred to as “extensions,” and are plywood cutouts shaped to accommodate the advertisement’s artwork in cases where text or a picture exceeds the boundaries of the billboard’s frame. For example, if the advertisement included a person with a raised arm and the arm extends past the edge of the top or the sides of the billboard, an extension shaped like an arm would be crafted from plywood and the advertisement vinyl would be glued to the extension to support the picture of the arm. Once the artwork is attached an angle iron is bolted to the back of the extension, and the extension is attached directly to the billboard frame with nails, nuts and bolts.

Plaintiff was working with the other crew members on an advertisement which required the attachment of four extensions. The extensions had been constructed in advance and transported to the billboard structure the day plaintiff was injured. During the course of their work, plaintiff and the construction crew used a crane operated by the plaintiff to raise the extensions along the outer side of the structure and onto the billboard’s lower outer catwalk. The billboard frame did not contain existing extensions that required removal, so once the new advertisement’s extensions were hoisted onto the catwalk the crew proceeded directly to the removal of the old advertisement vinyl. The job required that the crew move the old advertisement from one side of the frame to the other. Thus, the crew detached the advertisement vinyl from the panels facing the west side, and threw it down to the ground. They then began the process of moving the vinyl from the east-side facing panels in order to pull it up, around, and over the metal frame so that it fell onto the panels facing towards the west, where the vinyl would then be attached to the frame. The crew members were at different locations on the upper and lower catwalks as they worked on removing the old vinyl.

Had the job gone without disruption, after the crew removed the old vinyl they would slide metal rods into pockets around the perimeter of the new vinyl advertisement and then use ratchet straps to secure the new advertisement to the panels. The crew would then bolt the extensions’ angle irons to the stringers, to hold the extensions in place on the billboard frame. However, plaintiff fell and was injured while the crew was attempting to move the vinyl from the east side panels over the top of the frame and onto the west side panels.

Plaintiff was on the front catwalk when he heard the other crew members call for assistance because they were having difficulty due to the day’s wind conditions. Plaintiff went to the upper rear catwalk to assist them, and in order to get around one of the crew members, plaintiff detached his lanyard from the catwalk’s safety cable. Before he was able to reattach the lanyard, a strong wind gust caused the vinyl to strike plaintiff in the chest, knocking him 10 feet below onto the lower rear catwalk, where he landed with his back on an I-beam, and his shoulder on the metal catwalk. As a result, plaintiff suffered a dislocated right shoulder and several herniated discs in his back, precluding him from engaging in work on billboards. Plaintiff was subsequently terminated from his employment.

Plaintiffs sued defendant Syracuse Supply Company, owner of the property where the billboard is located, alleging violations of Labor Law §§ 240 (1), (2) and 241 (6), and derivative claims for plaintiff Sheila Saint’s loss of support, consortium, and expenses related to Joseph Saint’s medical bills. Defendant moved for summary judgment to dismiss plaintiffs’ amended complaint in its entirety, asserting that plaintiff Joseph Saint was not engaged in a covered activity under the Labor Law. Plaintiffs cross-moved for partial summary judgment on their Labor Law §§ 240 (1), (2) and 241 (6) claims. Supreme Court denied both motions, concluding that Labor Law §§ 240 and 241 applied to plaintiffs’ claims and that an issue of fact existed as to whether plaintiff was the sole proximate cause of his injuries for failure to reconnect his lanyard. Only defendant appealed the order.

The Appellate Division reversed and granted summary judgment for defendant and dismissed the amended complaint (Saint v Syracuse Supply Co., 110 AD3d 1470 [4th Dept 2013]). Relying in part on this Court’s decisions in Joblon v Solow (91 NY2d 457 [1998]) and Munoz v DJZ Realty, LLC (5 NY3d 747 [2005]), the Appellate Division concluded that plaintiffs work on the billboard did not constitute altering the building or structure for purposes of Labor Law § 240, and instead was “more akin to cosmetic maintenance or decorative modification” (Saint, 110 AD3d at 1471). The Court also concluded plaintiff was not engaged in construction work within the meaning of section 241 (6) (id..). We granted plaintiffs leave to appeal (22 NY3d 866 [2014]), and now reverse.

Labor Law § 240 (1) provides,

“All contractors and owners and their agents, except owners of one and two-family dwellings who contract for but do not direct or control the work, in the erection, demolition, repairing, altering, painting, cleaning or pointing of a building or structure shall furnish or erect, or cause to be furnished or erected for the performance of such labor, scaffolding, hoists, stays, ladders, slings, hangers, blocks, pulleys, braces, irons, ropes, and other devices which shall be so constructed, placed and operated as to give proper protection to a person so employed.”

The “purpose of the statute is to protect workers by placing ultimate responsibility for safety practices on owners and contractors instead of on workers themselves” (Panek v County of Albany, 99 NY2d 452, 457 [2003], citing Martinez v City of New York, 93 NY2d 322, 325-326 [1999], and Zimmer v Chemung County Performing Arts, 65 NY2d 513, 520 [1985]). To that end, section 240 (1) “is to be construed as liberally as may be for the accomplishment of the purpose for which it was thus framed” (Panek, 99 NY2d at 457, citing Gordon v Eastern Ry. Supply, 82 NY2d 555, 559 [1993]). Therefore, the Court has made clear that section 240 (1) imposes on owners or general contractors and their agents a nondelegable duty, and absolute liability for injuries proximately caused by the failure to provide appropriate safety devices to workers who are subject to elevation-related risks (see Rocovich v Consolidated Edison Co., 78 NY2d 509, 513 [1991]).

Plaintiff claims that he comes within the coverage of section 240 (1) because he physically altered the billboard by installing extensions that changed the physical shape of the structure. Defendant responds that plaintiffs injuries are outside the scope of the Labor Law because at the time of plaintiffs fall he was not engaged in the installation or removal of extensions. In any event, according to defendant, plaintiffs work was not an alteration because changing the vinyl advertisement is a routine maintenance activity, and any alleged change to the structure was not permanent in nature.

In determining whether plaintiff Joseph Saint was engaged in the type of work covered by section 240 (1), we first consider defendant’s contention that we should limit our analysis of plaintiffs activity to the moment of his injury. The Court previously rejected this narrow construction of the statute’s application in Prats v Port Auth. of N.Y. & N.J., because “it is neither pragmatic nor consistent with the spirit of the statute to isolate the moment of injury and ignore the general context of the work” (100 NY2d 878, 882 [2003]). Thus, in Prats the Court considered the totality of the plaintiffs actions, noting that he was part of the team working on an enumerated activity and on previous days he had done heavier alteration work for the same project at the same work site where he was injured {id. at 881-882). Based on the context of that work and because the “intent of the statute [is] to protect workers employed in the enumerated acts, even while performing duties ancillary to those acts” {id. at 882), the Court concluded that the plaintiff was engaged in alteration and thus covered under section 240 (1).

Defendant’s interpretation would compartmentalize a plaintiffs activity and exclude from the statute’s coverage preparatory work essential to the enumerated act. This construction of the Labor Law is exactly what the Court sought to avoid by Prats’s contextualized analysis, and would strip workers of the “exceptional protection that section 240 (1) provides” (Rocovich, 78 NY2d at 514). We therefore reject an interpretation unsupported by the case law and which does no more than undermine the statutory purpose of protecting workers from dangers inherent to tasks involving elevation differentials (see e.g. Robinson v City of New York, 22 AD3d 293, 293-294 [1st Dept 2005]; Fitzpatrick v State of New York, 25 AD3d 755, 757 [2d Dept 2006]; Randall v Time Warner Cable, Inc., 81 AD3d 1149, 1151 [3d Dept 2011]).

Applying this standard, we conclude that plaintiff was engaged in work that constitutes an alteration within the meaning of the statute. In reaching this determination we apply the definition the Court adopted in Joblon, that the term “altering” in section 240 (1) “requires making a significant physical change to the configuration or composition of the building or structure” (Joblon, 91 NY2d at 465). This definition excludes “routine maintenance” and “decorative modifications” {id.). Whether a physical change is significant depends on its effect on the physical structure. Thus, the Court held that the plaintiff in Joblon who was injured when he fell off a ladder while in the process of chiseling a hole through a concrete block wall so that he could run electrical wires from one room to another to install a wall clock was engaged in “altering” under section 240 (1). As the Court held, extending the wiring and chiseling a hole through the concrete constituted a significant change and entailed “more than a simple, routine activity” {id. at 465-466).

Here, plaintiffs job was to install a new advertisement. In order to do so he and the other members of the construction crew had to attach extensions that changed the dimensions of the billboard’s frame and transformed the shape of the billboard to accommodate the advertisement’s artwork. Plaintiff was injured when in furtherance of this task he fell while assisting the other crew members with the removal of the old vinyl advertisement from the billboard’s side panels. The vinyl removal was a prerequisite to the attachment of the extensions and therefore an integral part of the installation of the extensions. We have little difficulty concluding that the plaintiffs work entails a significant change to the billboard structure because once the vinyl is removed, the billboard is enlarged by the attachment of the extensions, work accomplished by the use of the angle iron on the back of each extension, and application of nuts, bolts and nails.

Moreover, plaintiffs facts differ from those of prior cases where the Court found the injured worker’s activity constituted routine maintenance, and thus was outside the coverage of the statute. Those cases involved simple tasks, involving minimal work. In comparison, the removal of an old advertisement and the installation of vinyl-covered plywood extensions for the purpose of enlarging the shape of the billboard to accommodate the new advertisement’s artwork involves the type of physical change significant enough to constitute a section 240 (1) alteration, and to distinguish plaintiffs work from routine maintenance illustrated by the changing of a lightbulb, as in the case of Smith v Shell Oil Co. (85 NY2d 1000, 1002 [1995]), the replacement of air conditioning components damaged in the course of normal wear and tear, as in Esposito v New York City Indus. Dev. Agency (1 NY3d 526, 528 [2003]), household window cleaning, like that involved in Brown v Christopher St. Owners Corp. (87 NY2d 938, 939 [1996]), or the routine, annual inspection of an elevator in Nagel v D & R Realty Corp. (99 NY2d 98, 99 [2002]).

Nor, on the facts of this case, is the installation of the new advertisement a “decorative modification” because the work here entails far more than a mere “change [ ] [to] the outward appearance of the billboard” (Munoz, 5 NY3d at 748). Instead, the job requires a change to the billboard’s size and an adjustment of the frame to accommodate the unique shape of the advertisement. Moreover, any change to the billboard frame ensures that a future installation of a new advertisement would require a subsequent alteration of the billboard’s structure. That is to say, if the new advertisement did not require extensions then the existing extensions would be removed and the frame left as is, or if the new advertisement required different extensions the old ones would be removed and the new ones installed. In either case, the billboard frame would be different from the one plaintiff would have altered.

Although plaintiffs job title is irrelevant to our analysis because we must focus on the actual work in which he was engaged (Joblon, 91 NY2d at 465-466), we note that plaintiffs activities bear out his designation as a construction crew member, and further support our conclusion that he was employed in the type of work covered by section 240 (1). Plaintiff operated the crane used to hoist the extensions. The installation of the new advertisement involved heavy lifting, and the attachment of wood and vinyl to a metal frame several feet above the ground.

We are unpersuaded by defendant’s argument that Munoz v DJZ Realty, where the Court concluded that an employee injured while working on a billboard was not involved in “alteration” for purposes of section 240 (1), is dispositive of plaintiffs case. In Munoz, the plaintiff was applying pre-pasted sheets to a billboard which the Court concluded merely “changed the outward appearance of the billboard, but did not change the billboard’s structure” (Munoz, 5 NY3d at 748). Notably, the Munoz plaintiff denied any assertion that the plastering constituted a change in the shape of the billboard (see brief for plaintiffs at 16 n 9 in Munoz v DJZ Realty, LLC, 5 NY3d 747 [2005]). Unlike the plaintiff in Munoz, plaintiff and his fellow crew members could not attach the new advertisement— the step that involved changing the outward appearance of the billboard — without first changing the size of the billboard to accommodate the vinyl for the new, larger advertisement. Far from the “cosmetic maintenance or decorative modification” that doomed the Munoz plaintiffs claim (5 NY3d at 748), plaintiffs activity required attachment of metal bolts, and the eventual attachment of the extension to the billboard frame itself.

Similarly unpersuasive is defendant’s argument that plaintiffs work is not an alteration within the meaning of section 240 (1) because the statute applies only to permanent changes. There is no support in the text or the case law for this limit on the statute’s reach. Nowhere does section 240 (1) impose or even mention a requirement that an alteration be of a permanent and fixed nature (see Labor Law § 240 [1]). Such a reading is at odds with the Court’s prior decisions. For example, in Panek, the alteration was to a building scheduled for demolition, a fact the Court said “does not change the nature of the work project at the time of [the plaintiffs] accident” (Panek, 99 NY2d at 458, citing Joblon, 91 NY2d at 465). In Joblon, the wall clock could have been removed, the wiring pulled out, and the chiseled hole refilled. Nevertheless, the Court concluded that “the work performed by Joblon was a significant physical change to the configuration or composition of the building” (Joblon, 91 NY2d at 465). In Weininger v Hagedorn & Co., the Court held that installing computer and telephone cables was an alteration within the meaning of section 240 (1) (91 NY2d 958 [1998], citing Joblon, 91 NY2d at 465). Yet, the computer and telephone cables could have been removed and the ceiling repaired. Similarly, in this case the fact that the advertisement extensions stay up as long as the sign does makes the work no less an alteration within the meaning of section 240 (1). The change to the physical attributes of the structure is what matters.

A requirement that the alteration be permanent would also undermine the worker protection purpose of the statute (see Rocovich, 78 NY2d at 513). Regardless of the duration of the completed work, the worker’s task remains the same, and the permanency of the alteration in no way diminishes the risk attendant to that task.

Given the nature of the plaintiffs work on the day of his injury and that the attachment of extensions to the billboard effects a significant change to the structure, plaintiff was engaged in work that constitutes “altering” within the meaning of Labor Law § 240 (1). Dismissal of his claim pursuant to this section was therefore error.

We also find that it was error to dismiss plaintiffs other Labor Law claims. Turning to his section 240 (2) claim, this provision requires, in relevant part, that “[s]caffolding or staging more than twenty feet from the ground or floor . . . shall have a safety rail of suitable material properly attached, bolted, braced or otherwise secured . . . .” It is undisputed that the billboard platform was 59 feet above the ground and that there was no safety railing surrounding the upper rear catwalk from which plaintiff fell. Therefore, plaintiff alleged a viable claim under section 240 (2), and its dismissal was error.

With respect to plaintiffs section 241 (6) claim, we agree with plaintiff that he was engaged in “construction work” and thus within the ambit of the statute. Pursuant to section 241 (6), “All areas in which construction, excavation or demolition work is being performed shall be so constructed, shored, equipped, guarded, arranged, operated and conducted as to provide reasonable and adequate protection and safety to the persons employed therein or lawfully frequenting such places.” In determining what constitutes “construction” for purposes of the statute we look to the Industrial Code which, as relevant here, defines construction to include alteration of a structure (12 NYCRR 23-1.4 [b] [13]). Since plaintiff was altering the billboard by installing the extension at the time of his injury, his claim comes within section 241 (6).

The defendant and Appellate Division’s reliance on Hatfield v Bridgedale, LLC (28 AD3d 608 [2d Dept 2006]) in support of the opposite conclusion is misplaced. In Hatfield, the Appellate Division affirmed the dismissal of plaintiffs section 241 (6) claim holding that the section “do[es] not apply to claims arising out of maintenance of a building or structure outside of the construction context” (id. at 610). However, unlike the plaintiff in Hatfield, for the reasons we have already discussed, plaintiff here was altering the billboard’s dimensions in order to apply the advertisement, and thus was not engaged in maintenance work.

Accordingly, the Appellate Division order should be reversed, with costs, and defendant’s motion for summary judgment denied.

Chief Judge Lippman and Judges Read, Pigott, AbdusSalaam, Stein and Fahey concur.

Order reversed, with costs, and defendant’s motion for summary judgment denied.

      . Plaintiffs also asserted claims under Labor Law § 200 and common-law negligence, but during the course of the proceedings conceded these claims were not viable. Plaintiffs also filed an amended complaint naming several additional defendants, but later withdrew those claims.

      . The plaintiff in Munoz claimed instead that by placing an advertisement on the face of the billboard, the plaintiff “altered” the composition of the billboard structure in a manner consistent with our holding in Joblon (brief for plaintiffs at 16 in Munoz v DJZ Realty, LLC, 5 NY3d 747 [2005]).


author: Stein, J. Rivera, J.

text:
    [30 NE3d 880, 8 NYS3d 237]
    The People of the State of New York, Appellant, v Rebecca Guthrie, Respondent.
    Argued February 19, 2015;
    decided April 7, 2015

      POINTS OF COUNSEL

      Richard M. Healy, District Attorney, Lyons (Bruce A. Rosekrans of counsel), for appellant.
    The court erred in determining that there was no probable cause or reasonable cause to stop defendant’s vehicle for a traffic infraction. (Whren v United States, 517 US 806; People v Robinson, 97 NY2d 341; United States v Stewart, 551 F3d 187; People v Estrella, 48 AD3d 1283, 10 NY3d 945; People v Davis, 32 AD3d 445; People v Scott, 191 AD2d 200, 82 NY2d 729.)

      James S. Kernan, Public Defender, Lyons (Andrew D. Cor

      reia and Richard W. Youngman of counsel), for respondent.
    The trial court finding that there was no legal basis for the stop of the defendant was correct. (Whren v United States, 517 US 806; People v Robinson, 97 NY2d 341; United States v Leon, 468 US 897; People v Bigelow, 66 NY2d 417; People v Spencer, 84 NY2d 749; People v Estrella, 48 AD3d 1283, 10 NY3d 945; People v Weaver, 16 NY3d 123; United States v Twilley, 222 F3d 1092; People v Gonzalez, 88 NY2d 289; People v Rose, 67 AD3d 1447.)
   OPINION OF THE COURT

Stein, J.

In this appeal, we are asked to decide whether there is probable cause to make a traffic stop for a suspected violation of law in accordance with article I, § 12 of the New York State Constitution and the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution if the justification for the stop is based upon a police officer’s objectively reasonable, but mistaken, view of the law. We conclude that where, as here, the officer’s mistake about the law is reasonable, the stop is constitutional.

I

At approximately 12:15 a.m. on September 27, 2009, a police officer stopped defendant’s vehicle after observing the vehicle drive past a stop sign without stopping. The stop sign was located at the edge of a supermarket parking lot in the Village of Newark, Wayne County, and defendant was exiting the lot onto a public street. Upon stopping defendant, the officer smelled a strong odor of alcohol. After defendant failed field sobriety tests and a breath analysis revealed that her blood alcohol level was over the legal limit, the officer arrested defendant and charged her with failing to stop at a stop sign in violation of Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1172 (a) and driving while intoxicated under Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1192 (2) and (3).

Asserting lack of probable cause for the initial stop, defendant moved to suppress the evidence resulting therefrom. The Newark Village Court took judicial notice of the location of the stop sign and that it was not registered in the Village Code (see Code of Village of Newark § 140-46). The court granted the suppression motion and dismissed the charges on the ground that the stop was not justified because the stop sign was not properly registered, as required by Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1100 (b). County Court of Wayne County affirmed, concluding that because the stop sign was not legally authorized, the traffic stop was improper because the officer’s good faith was insufficient to “blink away any irregularities in the laws he [was] attempting to enforce.” A Judge of this Court granted the People leave to appeal (22 NY3d 1156 [2014]), and we now reverse.

II

As this Court has previously explained, “any exercise of police power under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and our State constitutional corollary must be reasonable — a seizure by the police may not be arbitrary” (People v Robinson, 97 NY2d 341, 353 [2001]; see Heien v North Carolina, 574 US —, —, 135 S Ct 530, 536 [2014]). A traffic stop is a seizure and is permissible under the Fourth Amendment and article I, § 12 of the State Constitution when “a police officer has probable cause to believe that the driver of an automobile has committed a traffic violation” (Robinson, 97 NY2d at 349; see Whren v United States, 517 US 806, 809-810 [1996]). Probable cause, in turn, “does not require proof sufficient to warrant a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt but merely information sufficient to support a reasonable belief that an offense has been or is being committed or that evidence of a crime may be found in a certain place” (People v Bigelow, 66 NY2d 417, 423 [1985] [emphasis added]; see Ornelas v United States, 517 US 690, 696 [1996]). Thus, “[a] police officer who can articulate credible facts establishing reasonable cause to believe that someone has violated a law has established a reasonable basis to effectuate a [traffic] stop” (Robinson, 97 NY2d at 353-354).

Generally, a traffic stop is justified when an officer observes a vehicle fail to stop at a stop sign (see Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1172 [a]; People v Davis, 32 AD3d 445, 445 [2d Dept 2006], lv denied 7 NY3d 924 [2006]). However, the parties here are in agreement that the stop sign at issue was not legally valid because it was not properly registered as required by Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1100 (b). Thus, the People concede that defendant could not be prosecuted for a stop sign violation. Nevertheless, the People argue that the traffic stop was constitutionally justified because the officer observed what he reasonably believed to be a violation of the Vehicle and Traffic Law. Defendant counters that the officer made a mistake of law and that such a mistake, even if reasonable, can never provide justification for a traffic stop.

Although defendant and the dissent correctly note that the officer’s good faith belief that she violated the Vehicle and Traffic Law was not sufficient to justify the traffic stop (see Bigelow, 66 NY2d at 426-427), the relevant question before us is not whether the officer acted in good faith, but whether his belief that a traffic violation had occurred was objectively reasonable (see People v Estrella, 10 NY3d 945, 946 [2008], cert denied 555 US 1032 [2008]; see also Robinson, 97 NY2d at 349-350, 353-354). Recently, in Heien v North Carolina, the Supreme Court of the United States clarified that the Fourth Amendment tolerates objectively reasonable mistakes supporting such a belief, whether they are mistakes of fact or mistakes of law (574 US at —, 135 S Ct at 539). Heien involved a traffic stop of a vehicle that had only one working brake light, which the officer mistakenly believed to be a violation of North Carolina law (see 574 US at —, 135 S Ct at 534-535). The Court noted that, in its more recent precedent, it had “recognized that searches and seizures based on mistakes of fact can be reasonable,” and concluded that “[t]here is no reason, under the text of the Fourth Amendment or our precedents,” why the same result should not be acceptable “when reached by way of a similarly reasonable mistake of law” (574 US at —, 135 S Ct at 536). Citing a number of its nineteenth century decisions “explaining the concept of probable cause” (574 US at —, 135 S Ct at 537), the Court stated that its “cases dating back two centuries support treating legal and factual errors alike in this context” (574 US at —, 135 S Ct at 536-537). In light of “the reality that an officer may suddenly confront a situation in the field as to which the application of a statute is unclear— however clear it may later become” (574 US at —, 135 S Ct at 539 [internal quotation marks omitted]) — the Court concluded that the officer’s misreading of the statute at issue, which was susceptible of multiple interpretations and had not been definitively construed by the North Carolina appellate courts, amounted to a reasonable mistake of law justifying the traffic stop (see 574 US at —, 135 S Ct at 540). Thus, while the defendant could not be prosecuted under North Carolina law for having only one brake light, his cocaine-trafficking conviction— which flowed from a search incident to the traffic stop — was upheld (see 574 US at —, 135 S Ct at 540).

Similarly, in People v Estrella, this Court affirmed an Appellate Division order upholding the denial of a motion to suppress cocaine recovered after a traffic stop based upon car windows that were over-tinted under Vehicle and Traffic Law §375 (12-a) (b) but permissible in Georgia, the state in which the vehicle was registered (10 NY3d at 946, affg 48 AD3d 1283, 1284-1285 [2008]). The Fourth Department concluded that suppression of the drugs found as a result of the traffic stop was not warranted because, among other things, “it is unreasonable to require that police officers be familiar with the equipment requirement laws of every state, and presumably other countries, in order to effectuate a proper stop for a violation of New York State law” (Estrella, 48 AD3d at 1285). Two dissenting Justices would have reversed on the ground that the officer who stopped the vehicle made a mistake of law and, therefore, lacked probable cause to believe that defendant had committed a traffic infraction. The dissenters reasoned that a “mistake of law, as opposed to a mistake of fact, cannot justify the stop of a vehicle and the ensuing search and subsequent seizure of evidence therefrom,” and that “police officers must be charged with the objective standard of knowing whether [a traffic] infraction occurred” (id. at 1287).

On appeal, we affirmed, rejecting the rationale of the dissenting Justices. Without drawing any distinction between mistakes of fact and mistakes of law in the context of traffic stops, we determined that “[t]he record supports the finding that the officer who stopped the car reasonably believed the windows to be over-tinted in violation of [the] Vehicle and Traffic Law” (Estrella, 10 NY3d at 946 [emphasis added]). We concluded that the officer was not chargeable with knowledge that the window tinting was legal in Georgia (see id.).

m

So too here, we look to the reasonableness of the officer’s belief that defendant violated the Vehicle and Traffic Law, without drawing any distinction between mistakes of fact and mistakes of law. In Estrella, the arresting officer would have been expected to know that Vehicle and Traffic Law § 250 (1) provides an exemption from this state’s registration and equipment requirements for out-of-state vehicles that comply with the requirements of the state in which they are registered. We concluded, however, that because the officer was not chargeable with knowledge of the legal registration and equipment requirements of Georgia, the stop was justified based upon the officer’s reasonable belief that the defendant had violated the Vehicle and Traffic Law (Estrella, 10 NY3d at 946). Similarly here, we are not saying that it would have been objectively reasonable for the arresting officer to have claimed ignorance of the requirement in Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1100 (b) that a stop sign in a parking lot be registered to be valid. We are saying that the stop was nonetheless constitutionally justified because the officer was not chargeable with knowing each and every stop sign that was registered under the Newark Village Code.

We note that defendant and the dissent rely upon a string of Appellate Division cases holding that, “[w]here the officer’s belief is based on an erroneous interpretation of law, the stop is illegal at the outset and any further actions by the police as a direct result of the [traffic] stop are illegal” (Matter of Byer v Jackson, 241 AD2d 943, 944-945 [4th Dept 1997]; see People v Rose, 67 AD3d 1447, 1449 [4th Dept 2009]; People v Smith, 67 AD3d 1392, 1392 [4th Dept 2009]; see also People v Allen, 90 AD3d 1082, 1084 [3d Dept 2011]; People v MacKenzie, 61 AD3d 703, 703 [2d Dept 2009], lv denied 13 NY3d 798 [2009]; People v Jean-Pierre, 47 AD3d 445, 445 [1st Dept 2008], lv denied 10 NY3d 865 [2008]). The dissent maintains that, given these Appellate Division cases, Estrella could not have been intended to “eliminate[ ]” the mistake of law/mistake of fact distinction (dissenting op at 147). That distinction, however, was never as well-established as the dissent would have it. Despite the evident consensus among the Appellate Division Departments that a mistake of law cannot justify a traffic stop, this Court has never distinguished between mistakes of law and mistakes of fact in considering the reasonableness of a traffic stop and the decision in Estrella is consistent with that fact.

Our decision in People v Gonzalez is not to the contrary. The holding in that case — that a “mistaken belief as to the law, no matter how reasonable, is not sufficient” to establish a constitutionally valid search and seizure (People v Gonzalez, 88 NY2d 289, 295 [1996] [internal quotation marks and citations omitted]) — was limited to the context of the apparent authority doctrine. We held that “the apparent authority of a third party to consent to a search of a suspect’s personal effects must rest upon the police officer’s reasonably held factual interpretation of the circumstances; it cannot be based on a mistaken view of the law” (id.). Our conclusion was based almost entirely upon the then “consistent reading of [Illinois v Rodriguez (497 US 177, 179 [1990])] by the [f]ederal courts” applying the apparent authority doctrine (Gonzalez, 88 NY2d at 295); we did not hold that our State Constitution provides greater protection than the Federal Constitution in the apparent authority context, or indicate in any way that article I, § 12 of the State Constitution does not tolerate reasonable mistakes of law.

We, therefore, reject defendant’s argument and the contention of the dissent that the distinction between mistakes of fact and mistakes of law set forth in Gonzalez should be expanded to the context of determining whether probable cause exists for a traffic stop. Such an expansion would constitute a departure from Helen and, in our view, “[n]one of the reasons for extending [the] protections of our Constitution beyond those given by the Federal Constitution exist here” (Robinson, 97 NY2d at 351). This Court has adopted separate state constitutional standards “when doing so best promotes predictability and precision in judicial review of search and seizure cases and the protection of the individual rights of our citizens” (People v P.J. Video, 68 NY2d 296, 304 [1986], cert denied 479 US 1091 [1987] [internal quotation marks and citations omitted]; see People v Weaver, 12 NY3d 433, 445 [2009]). We have also deviated, based on our state constitutional standards, from Supreme Court decisions that undermine our ability to “provide and maintain ‘bright line’ rules to guide the decisions of law enforcement and judicial personnel who must understand and implement our decisions in their day-to-day operations in the field” (P.J. Video, 68 NY2d at 305). More fundamentally, while we have declined to adopt an “ironclad [methodology] to be rigidly applied” in determining whether separate standards are warranted, we have recognized “that we act [ ]properly in discharging our responsibility to support the State Constitution when we examine whether we should follow . . . as a matter of State law” any recent decision of the Supreme Court that marks a “change! ] [in] course and dilution] [of] constitutional principles” or protections previously enjoyed by the citizens of this state (People v Scott, 79 NY2d 474, 504 [1992, Kaye, J., concurring]).

In Heien, the Supreme Court did not change course; rather, the Court relied on its “cases dating back two centuries [that] support treating legal and factual errors alike in this context” (574 US at —, 135 S Ct at 536-537). Nor does Heien represent a dilution of our “State . . . common law defining the scope of the individual right in question” (P.J. Video, 68 NY2d at 303) or “an enormous unsupervised intrusion by the police . . . upon personal privacy” (Weaver, 12 NY3d at 445). As explained above, this Court has never held that a reasonable mistake of law cannot provide justification for a traffic stop and, even in the context of cases involving the apparent authority of a third party to consent to a search, our conclusion that a mistake of law could not establish a constitutionally valid search or seizure was based upon federal law, not state constitutional or common law (see Gonzalez, 88 NY2d at 295-296). What we have held is that an officer’s objectively “reasonabl[e] belie[f]” that he or she has witnessed a violation of the Vehicle and Traffic Law justifies a traffic stop, even when the officer made a mistake of law (Estrella, 10 NY3d at 946).

Moreover, the purportedly “bright-line rule” adopted by the Appellate Division Departments that mistakes of law can never provide the basis for a traffic stop has not promoted precision and predictability. To the contrary, the rule has proved difficult to apply as evidenced by the discussion in People v Abdul-Akim (27 Misc 3d 1220[A], 2010 NY Slip Op 50814[U], *9 [Sup Ct, Kings County 2010]), in which the trial court discussed cases either ignoring or attempting to employ the distinction and observed, “it [is] not always . . . easy to classify a particular mistake as one of law or fact.” While the dissent posits that we should apply a rule that a stop based upon a mistake of law is constitutionally invalid “because [then] there would be no need to determine the objective reasonableness of the officer’s mistake of the law” (dissenting op at 144), this Court has already demonstrated that we have no trouble making that determination when called upon to do so (see Estrella, 10 NY3d at 946). Contrary to the dissent’s concerns that our refusal to expand the mistake of fact/mistake of law distinction to the context of traffic stops provides a disincentive for police officers to know the law (dissenting op at 144-145), a rule that even objectively reasonable mistakes of law cannot provide a basis for a traffic stop would do little to protect the rights of the accused or encourage officers to better learn the law (see generally Robinson, 97 NY2d at 351). As the Supreme Court explained, the requirement that the mistake be objectively reasonable prevents officers from “gaining] [any] Fourth Amendment advantage through a sloppy study of the laws [they are] duty-bound to enforce” (Heien, 574 US at —, 135 S Ct at 539-540).

Finally, there is no unfairness in forgiving a police officer’s objectively reasonable mistake of law while refusing to allow an individual to “escape criminal liability based on a mistaken understanding of the law” (Heien, 574 US at —, 135 S Ct at 540). Neither the Supreme Court nor this Court have held that “the government can[ ] impose criminal liability based on a mistaken understanding of the law”; rather, “just because mistakes of law cannot justify either the imposition or the avoidance of criminal liability, it does not follow that they cannot justify an investigatory stop” (574 US at —, 135 S Ct at 540).

IV

Applying Helen and our decision in Estrella here, we conclude that the traffic stop was justified under both the Fourth Amendment and article I, § 12 based on the officer’s reasonable belief that defendant failed to stop at a valid stop sign. It is undisputed that the stop sign was of regulation color, height and dimension; its only defect was that it was not properly registered. Under Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1110 (c), there is a presumption that “official traffic-control devices [that] are placed in position approximately conforming to the requirements of this chapter . . . have been so placed by the official act or direction of lawful authority, unless the contrary shall be established by competent evidence.” Although the stop sign here was ultimately established to be unregistered, the presumption is indicative of the legislature’s intent that traffic control devices appearing to be proper be assumed valid, absent proof to the contrary. In our view, “[t]he officer was not chargeable with knowledge that the” stop sign at issue was not registered under Newark Village Code § 140-46, which lists 130 registered stop signs in the village (Estrella, 10 NY3d at 946). Nor was he required to verify that the stop sign was valid before making the traffic stop — rather, the stop was based on probable cause because the officer reasonably believed that he had observed defendant violate the Vehicle and Traffic Law. Although the stop sign was not registered and, therefore, defendant did not violate Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1172 (a), the evidence recovered as a result of the traffic stop need not be suppressed.

Accordingly, the order of County Court should be reversed, defendant’s motion to suppress denied, and the case remitted to Village Court for further proceedings in accordance with this opinion.

Rivera, J.

(dissenting). The courts of this state have consistently held that a police officer’s mistake of law cannot provide the requisite probable cause for a valid search and seizure. It is also well-established that evidence obtained as a result of a seizure lacking probable cause must be suppressed. Given this legal landscape, I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that under our State Constitution an officer’s erroneous belief that a driver violated the law may provide probable cause for a vehicular stop, and, regardless of the driver’s innocence, a court may admit evidence obtained as a consequence of the officer’s mistake. Therefore, I dissent.

L

A vehicular stop is valid under New York State’s Constitution when “a police officer has probable cause to believe that the driver of an automobile has committed a traffic violation” (People v Robinson, 97 NY2d 341, 349 [2001]; see NY Const, art I, § 12). As the majority correctly states, the legal validity of the stop depends on whether the officer’s belief that the defendant violated the Vehicle and Traffic Law is objectively reasonable (majority op at 134). However, what is objectively reasonable depends on what the officer knew at the time of the stop (see People v William II, 98 NY2d 93, 98 [2002]; People v Banks, 85 NY2d 558, 562 [1995]; People v Cantor, 36 NY2d 106, 112 [1975]).

In order to make a determination as to the lawfulness of a driver’s actions under the Vehicle and Traffic Law, it is axiomatic that an officer must know the mandates and prescriptions set forth in that law (People v Robinson, 97 NY2d at 351, 355 [“the Vehicle and Traffic Law provides an objective grid upon which to measure probable cause” for making a traffic stop]). While an officer must know the rules of the road in order to properly enforce the law, it is also the reality of police work that an officer acts based on facts which cannot be known in advance, and which unfold in the moments leading up to the stop. Thus, while an officer’s appreciation of the facts depends on what develops in the field, an officer’s knowledge of the law’s requirements is set without reference to those facts. Although an officer must determine if the facts as observed constitute a violation of the law, the law remains as written.

Given the legal mandates of the Vehicle and Traffic Law and the dynamics of police work in this area, where an officer acts on a mistaken perception of the circumstances leading to a vehicular stop, courts must determine whether such mistake is excusable, and whether the error may supply the requisite probable cause to justify police action. As a general matter, courts in New York have distinguished between mistakes of fact and law, and applied that distinction to traffic stops (see People v Rose, 67 AD3d 1447, 1449 [4th Dept 2009] [stop of defendant’s vehicle could not be justified by officer’s mistaken belief that defendant violated the Vehicle and Traffic Law by flashing high beams]; Matter of McDonell v New York State Dept. of Motor Vehicles, 77 AD3d 1379, 1380 [4th Dept 2010] [state trooper’s mistaken belief that fishtailing violated Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1162, which prohibits unsafely moving a stopped, standing, or parked vehicle unless doing so can be done with reasonable safety, could not justify stop of defendant’s vehicle]; People v MacKenzie, 61 AD3d 703, 703 [2d Dept 2009], lv denied 13 NY3d 798 [2009] [police officer’s observation that defendant was driving without headlights on, 15 minutes after sunset, could not provide the officer with probable cause to make a traffic stop where statute provided that headlights are not generally required until 30 minutes after sunset]; People v Jean-Pierre, 47 AD3d 445, 445 [1st Dept 2008], lv denied 10 NY3d 865 [2008] [stating in dictum that “ ‘(a) mistake of fact, but not a mistake of law, may be used to justify a search and seizure’ ”]; People v Smith, 1 AD3d 965, 965-966 [4th Dept 2003] [officer’s stop of defendant’s vehicle was unlawful because it was premised on the mistaken belief that the vehicle required a front license plate]; Matter of Byer v Jackson, 241 AD2d 943, 944-945 [4th Dept 1997] [officer’s stop of defendant was illegal because it was predicated on the erroneous belief that defendant’s failure to use a turn signal when turning out of a parking lot violated the Vehicle and Traffic Law]; see also People v Allen, 90 AD3d 1082, 1084 [3d Dept 2011] [stating in dicta that “reasonable suspicion cannot be based on a mistake of law”]; People v Baez, 131 Misc 2d 689 [Crim Ct, Bronx County 1986] [stop invalid where police officer mistakenly believed that it was illegal for defendant to have affixed defendant’s license plate by wiring and not bolts]).

In these cases the courts have concluded that the officer’s reasonable mistake of fact, measured by the circumstances faced by the officer at the time of the stop, may support a finding of probable cause, meaning that a stop will be treated as lawful, so long as the officer objectively, reasonably believes that the facts justify the stop, even though the actual facts fail to establish the driver’s violation of the Vehicle and Traffic Law. The courts have not been so forgiving of a mistake of law, and have concluded that such mistake can never justify a stop. (See Allen, 90 AD3d at 1084; Rose, 67 AD3d at 1449; McDonell, 77 AD3d at 1380; MacKenzie, 61 AD3d at 703; Jean-Pierre, 47 AD3d at 445; Smith, 1 AD3d at 965-966; Byer, 241 AD2d at 944-945; Baez, 131 Misc 2d at 693-694.)

The distinction is wholly logical and serves the state’s interests in protecting individual rights and ensuring uniform application of the law. Society relies on police officers to enforce laws based on what the laws say, not on an officer’s mistaken belief. Excusing an officer’s mistake of law removes an incentive to learning the law. While the realities of police work rightly justify tolerance of an officer’s mistake of fact, there is no similar basis to accept or excuse an officer’s error regarding what the law permits and forbids.

IL

This Court is now presented directly with the question whether, as a state constitutional matter, an officer’s mistake of law may provide a basis for probable cause to justify a vehicular stop. The majority concludes that our State Constitution provides no greater protection in this area than the Federal Constitution, as articulated in Heien v North Carolina (574 US —, —, 135 S Ct 530, 534 [2014]), which held that a mistake of law may provide reasonable suspicion to justify a seizure under the Fourth Amendment. However, Heien is not dispositive of our state constitutional analysis.

In the area of search and seizure law, this Court has not hesitated in diverging from the federal approach where a narrow construction of constitutional guarantees would ill-serve our state interests {see Stewart F. Hancock, Jr., New York State Constitutional Law — Today Unquestionably Accepted and Applied as a Vital and Essential Part of New York Jurisprudence, 'll Alb L Rev 1331, 1346 [2014] [according to former New York Court of Appeals Judge Hancock, Jr., “state constitutionalism . . . (is) routinely applied ... to resolv(e) issues of fundamental rights in New York. State constitutional law — and especially its reestablished legitimacy and unhesitating use by judges at all levels of (the) New York judiciary — have helped make the New York judicial system the leading and, in my opinion, the best in the nation”]). For example, we have interpreted our State Constitution more expansively than the Federal Constitution in a way that “best promotes ‘predictability and precision in judicial review of search and seizure cases and the protection of the individual rights of our citizens’ ” (People v P.J. Video, 68 NY2d 296, 304 [1986]; see also People v Scott, 79 NY2d 474, 478 [1992] [declining to adopt Supreme Court’s holding that areas outside a home’s curtilage enjoy no Fourth Amendment protection]; People v Harris, 77 NY2d 434, 438-439 [1991] [State Constitution requires suppression of statements obtained after Payton violation in absence of attenuation, even where statements would not have been suppressed under Federal Constitution]; People v Bigelow, 66 NY2d 417, 426-427 [1985] [rejecting good faith exception to the exclusionary rule]; Hancock, Jr., 77 Alb L Rev at 1332 [“when a New York court concludes that an individual has rights that are not protected under the (F)ederal Constitution, but should be under the New York Constitution, the court will afford that person the greater protection as a matter of state constitutional law. It is simply a matter of fairness and common sense”]; NY Const, art I, § 12). The Court has also sought to adopt “ ‘bright line’ rules [in this area] to guide the decisions of law enforcement and judicial personnel who must understand and implement our decisions in their day-to-day operations” (P.J. Video, 68 NY2d at 305). Even where the United States Supreme Court has not spoken, this Court has read our State Constitution to prevent “enormous unsupervised intrusion by the police . . . upon personal privacy,” notwithstanding a possible future federal determination to the contrary (People v Weaver, 12 NY3d 433, 445 [2009]).

In light of our prior broad interpretation of our State Constitution, and the uniformity of New York case law that has rejected consideration of a mistake of law as part of the probable cause analysis, and because a “violation of a statute . . . triggers the officer’s authority to make the stop and limits the officer’s discretion” (Robinson, 97 NY2d at 355), I would find that a stop based on a police officer’s mistake of law violates our State’s Constitution under article I, § 12. The rule has the benefit of promoting precision and predictability in judicial review because there would be no need to determine the objective reasonableness of the officer’s mistake of the law. All that would need to be considered is what the law says, thus providing a bright-line rule easily followed by the courts and law enforcement, and ensuring the protection of individual rights.

Such a defined rule would incentivize police to know the law; for why would an officer risk a mistake that would result in a judicial determination that the stop was unlawful at its inception? Moreover, if civilians are required to know the law, I see no reason for expecting less from those charged with enforcing it. There is a “fundamental unfairness of holding citizens to ‘the traditional rule that ignorance of the law is no excuse,’ while allowing those ‘entrusted to enforce’ the law to be ignorant of it” (United States v Chanthasouxat, 342 F3d 1271, 1280 [11th Cir 2003] [citation omitted], citing Bryan v United States, 524 US 184, 196 [1998]). Certainly the police have labored under this approach without significant damage to public security and safety (see Heien, 574 US at —, 135 S Ct at 544 [Sotomayor, J., dissenting] [noting there was “no indication that excluding an officer’s mistake of law from the reasonableness inquiry has created a problem for law enforcement in the overwhelming number of Circuits which have adopted that approach”]). Since police are entrusted with authority to safeguard all members of our society, we should not adopt a rule that rewards an error concerning the legitimacy of the officer’s exercise of such power.

I also find no basis for the majority’s conclusion that the rule against mistakes of law fails to promote precision and predictability simply on the majority’s assumption that “it [is] not always . . . easy to classify a particular mistake as one of law or fact” (majority op at 139, citing People v Abdul-Akim, 27 Misc 3d 1220[A], 2010 NY Slip Op 50814[U], *9 [Sup Ct, Kings County 2010]). Nothing suggests that courts have had difficulty, as a general matter, in categorizing an officer’s mistake as one that turns on a misunderstanding of the law, or on incorrect facts. Courts are regularly called upon to determine legal matters and there is no reason to think that courts will be any less able to do so in an area that had been well-settled until today.

While the majority asserts, by way of example, that the mistake at issue in this appeal could be of fact or law (majority op at 139 n 5), this case actually illustrates why there is no problem, of a constitutional dimension, in distinguishing between the two. First, both lower courts easily concluded that defendant’s case involves a question of law, undermining any suggestion that this was a particularly challenging decision. Second, if there is any lack of clarity here it is not due to the inherent difficulty of distinguishing a mistake of law from fact, but to the parties’ stipulation, which in this case failed to address what the officer believed. In other words, if we do not know whether he knew the legal requirements of the Vehicle and Traffic Law that is only because we lack information readily available from the officer, not because there is a problem with the rule.

If the decision today were limited to the validity of the stop alone, it might not be so troubling, but that is not the case. The majority concludes that the evidence obtained as a direct consequence of the stop is admissible against the defendant (majority op at 140). In so doing the majority has limited the reach of this Court’s prior holding in People v Bigelow, which rejected, on state constitutional grounds, a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule which the United States Supreme Court had previously adopted (Bigelow, 66 NY2d at 426-427, citing United States v Leon, 468 US 897 [1984]). The Bigelow Court reasoned that “if the People are permitted to use the seized evidence, the exclusionary rule’s purpose is completely frustrated, a premium is placed on the illegal police action and a positive incentive is provided to others to engage in similar lawless acts in the future” (id. at 427). This analysis applies with equal force to an officer’s mistake of law, and provides an additional reason to reject such mistake as a viable consideration in determining the existence of probable cause in support of the admission of unlawfully obtained evidence (see United States v Lopez-Soto, 205 F3d 1101, 1106 [2000] [excusing an officer’s reasonable mistake of the law would “defeat the purpose of the exclusionary rule, for it would remove the incentive for police to make certain that they properly understand the law that they are entrusted to enforce and obey”]).

III.

The majority relies on People v Estrella (10 NY3d 945 [2008], cert denied 555 US 1032 [2008]) for its argument that we have previously rejected the distinction between mistakes of law and fact, seemingly suggesting it does not break new ground in defendant’s case. In my opinion, the majority attaches an overly generous significance to Estrella, and ignores the main distinction between that case and this appeal.

In Estrella, police stopped a vehicle with Georgia license plates believing that its windows were excessively tinted in violation of Vehicle and Traffic Law § 375 (12-a) (b) (4) (People v Estrella, 48 AD3d 1283, 1284-1285 [4th Dept 2008]). As it turned out the police were incorrect because the tinting was subject to Vehicle and Traffic Law § 250 (1). That section excludes from New York’s registration and equipment requirements certain nonresident owners of out-of-state vehicles that are in compliance with corresponding requirements of the state in which the owner resides (id. at 1285). The Appellate Division concluded that the officer had probable cause to stop the driver, and County Court properly denied the defendant’s request to suppress the evidence seized from the vehicle as a result of the stop (id. at 1284-1285).

This Court affirmed in a cursory, five sentence memorandum opinion. The majority here contends that the Court in Estrella based its decision on the officer’s reasonable belief, without distinguishing between mistakes of law and fact (majority op at 135-136). The majority reaches this conclusion based on the Estrella Court’s statement that “[t]he officer was not chargeable with knowledge that the tinting was legal in Georgia, where the car was registered” (Estrella, 10 NY3d at 946). Such a sweeping interpretation of Estrella, however, cannot be read into this one sentence.

Certainly, no Appellate Division interpreted this Court’s memorandum decision in Estrella to have eliminated the well-established distinction between mistakes of law and fact. PostEstrella, all the Appellate Division Departments, including the Fourth Department, continued to apply this distinction (see e.g. Rose, 67 AD3d at 1449; McDonell, 77 AD3d at 1380; MacKenzie, 61 AD3d at 703).

Moreover, because at the time this Court affirmed the Fourth Department in Estrella, the lower courts consistently applied the mistake of law/mistake of fact distinction, if this Court had intended to upset the approach in this state, it most certainly would have done so in an opinion that fully articulated the grounding for its decision (see People v Jones, 24 NY3d 623 [2014] [noting that the Court was departing with its previous case law and explaining the grounds for that departure]; People v Damiano, 87 NY2d 477, 489 [1996] [long-settled rules open to reexamination where “some evidence that the policy concerns underlying them are outdated or if they have proved unworkable”]; People v Bing, 76 NY2d 331, 338 [1990] [recognizing Court’s obligation to justify a significant departure from its prior case law]). Instead, the Court issued an opinion devoid of citations to any law, in support of what most certainly would have been considered a deviation from New York’s longstanding approach.

In my opinion, Estrella is more properly understood to limit the laws for which an officer is responsible — “chargeable with knowledge” in the words of the Estrella Court — to those of the State of New York. That is a suitable place to draw the line regarding the legal knowledge expected of an officer. Otherwise, it would place undue demands on a police officer to have to be familiar with the laws of every other jurisdiction, when those laws relate to the minutia of technical requirements imposed on an automobile. Automobile window tinting in Estrella is but one example.

The same cannot be said for a New York officer’s understanding of New York law. We expect an officer to know the law of this state with precision because that law is the source of the officer’s authority. We should not excuse an error about the basic foundation of an officer’s power, or discourage better comprehension of it. Moreover, if, as the majority concludes, we cannot depend on an officer charged with enforcement powers to know the law, we place in question the integrity of our criminal justice system. That strikes me as an unacceptable outcome of the majority’s approach.

IV

Here, defendant did not violate the Vehicle and Traffic Law. Therefore, I dissent because under the State Constitution, the officer had no probable cause to stop her vehicle, and the courts below properly suppressed evidence obtained pursuant to the stop.

Chief Judge Lippman and Judges Read, Pigott, AbdusSalaam and Fahey concur; Judge Rivera dissents in an opinion.

Order reversed, defendant’s motion to suppress denied and case remitted to Village Court, Village of Newark, for further proceedings in accordance with the opinion herein.

      . As relevant here, Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1100 (b) provides that the rules of the road “relating to obedience to stop signs . . . shall apply to a parking lot only when the legislative body of any city, village or town has adopted a local law, ordinance, rule or regulation ordering such signs.”

      . This distinction is significant in that a mistake of law that is merely made in “good faith” will not validate a traffic stop; rather, unless the mistake is objectively reasonable, any evidence gained from the stop — whether based on a mistake of law or a mistake of fact — must be suppressed. Thus, contrary to the dissent’s suggestion, our holding in this case does not represent a limitation on the rule set forth in People v Bigelow (66 NY2d 417 [1985]) that there is no good faith exception to the exclusionary rule (see id. at 427).

      . Vehicle and Traffic Law § 250 (1) provides an exemption from its requirements for nonresident vehicle owners whose vehicles are in compliance with the registration and equipment requirements of the nonresident’s home state, so long as the state grants “like exemptions” to New York residents.

      . The dissent implicitly concedes that the mistake in People v Estrella (10 NY3d 945 [2008]) was one of law — stating that Estrella is “more properly understood to limit the laws for which an officer is responsible” (dissenting op at 148), i.e., by positing that mistakes as to the law of other states are reasonable, the dissent essentially argues that Estrella should be understood as limiting which mistakes of law this Court is willing to recognize as objectively reasonable.

      . Indeed, in the case before us, the mistake of the officer as to whether the stop sign was justified under the Vehicle and Traffic Law could be characterized as a mistake of fact or of law — even if the officer knew of the legal requirement that stop signs in a parking lot must be formally registered to be valid, but was mistaken about whether this particular stop sign was on the list of registered signs. That said, while we do not know what the officer actually believed because the parties’ stipulation did not contain that information, we are ultimately concerned, not with the officer’s subjective belief, but with whether there is an “objective safeguard! ] circumscribing the exercise of police discretion” (People v Robinson, 97 NY2d 341, 351 [2001] [internal quotation marks and citation omitted]). Here, the requirement that a mistake be objectively reasonable provides that safeguard (see Heien v North Carolina, 574 US —, —, 135 S Ct 530, 539-540 [2014]).

      . The majority posits that excluding mistakes of law from the probable cause analysis “[will] do little to protect the rights of the accused or encourage officers to better learn the law” (majority op at 139). This argument relies on the majority’s underlying flawed premise that objectively reasonable mistakes of law involve only complex matters which officers simply should not be expected to learn. Of course those are exactly the types of mistakes that we should incentivize officers to avoid by excluding evidence obtained as a result of such errors. Moreover, if a law is simply too difficult for an officer to understand or learn, why should we expect those without legal training to fare any better?

      . The majority contends that the admission of evidence resulting from a mistake of law does not limit Bigelow because if the mistake fails the objectively reasonable test, the evidence will be suppressed (majority op at 134 n 2). However, that reading of Bigelow ignores the overarching concern that underlies the decision, namely that we should adopt rules that deter police misconduct. Moreover, the majority ignores the intersection of good faith and objectively reasonable mistakes of law. Under Bigelow, evidence obtained by an officer who acts mistakenly, but in good faith, is inadmissible, regardless of the objectively reasonable character of the officer’s mistake. In contrast, under the majority’s approach, evidence is admissible if the officer acts in good faith and the mistake is deemed objectively reasonable.

      . The majority incorrectly characterizes my argument about Estrella as concerning “which mistakes of law” are objectively reasonable (majority op at 138 n 4). Unlike the majority, I believe Estrella focused on the more general and rational point that New York officers should be expected to know New York law. Whether a mistake concerning a foreign jurisdiction’s law is objectively reasonable is beside the point.