CPLR § 5601 Appeal as of right to the Court of Appeals and Submission of orders

The wife appealed the Appellate Division's May 2007 order to us as of right, based on the dual dissent (see
CPLR 5601[a])¹. The husband sought leave to appeal from the same order,
which we granted. His appeal brings up for review the Appellate
Division's June 1998 order affirming the 1996 judgment (see CPLR 5501[a][1]). We now reverse the Appellate Division's May 2007 order, and uphold its June 1998 order.

The 1996 judgment and the 1999 amended judgment unquestionably
were not subject to Rule 202.48's 60-day requirement. These judgments
carried out the 1996 decision, which directed the parties to "[s]ettle
judgment." Moreover, the decretal paragraph specifically addressing the
Chemical Bank monies provided that the wife was "entitled to enter a money judgment against [the husband] for the total amount due and owing to Chemical Bank without further order"
([emphasis added]). That is, this paragraph set out a "simple judgment
for a sum of money which speaks for itself," and therefore falls
outside the ambit of Rule 202.48 (Funk v Barry, 89 NY2d 364, 367 [1996]). As we emphasized in Funk,
the "settle" or "submit" trigger for the 60-day limitation of Rule
202.48(a) "does not purport to govern the flow of the entry process,
which is a ministerial recording function that is separate and distinct
from the procedure of obtaining the court's signature on a proposed
judgment" (89 NY2d at 368 [citations omitted]). And to further drive
home the point that no further court action was, in fact, contemplated
or [*7]required with respect to the
monies owed Chemical Bank, Supreme Court added the phrase "without
further order" to the typewritten text of the proposed counter-judgment
submitted in 1996.