Pending before the court is a C.P.L. § 30.30 motion to dismiss alleging that the prosecution has exhausted its readiness time. Because the accusatory instrument, at its most serious, charges misdemeanors punishable up to 364 days in jail, the prosecution had ninety days to be ready for trial. (C.P.L. § 30.30[1][b]). "Whether the People have satisfied this obligation is generally determined by computing the time elapsed between the filing of the first accusatory instrument and the People's declaration of readiness, subtracting any periods of delay that are excludable under the terms of the statute and then adding to the result any postreadiness periods of delay that are actually attributable to the People and are ineligible for an exclusion." (People v. Cortes, 80 NY2d 201, 208 [1992]).

Even assuming arguendo that the prosecution's statements of readiness were valid, they have nonetheless exhausted their ninety-day limit. Eighty-three days elapsed between the filing of the first accusatory instrument on August 26, 2023, and the prosecution's statement of readiness on November 17, 2023. The court must thereafter add "any postreadiness periods of delay that are actually attributable to the People and are ineligible for an exclusion." (Cortes, 80 NY2d at 208).

Under C.P.L. § 30.30[4][a], a "reasonable period of delay resulting from . . . pre-trial motions" must be excluded from any C.P.L. § 30.30 calculation. As that rule implies, however, if the prosecution unreasonably delays proceedings on a pretrial motion, then that delay is attributable to them and ineligible for exclusion. "Thus, the People are chargeable with the time between [a] court-imposed deadline to respond . . . and the date on which the People actually filed a response." (People ex rel. Ferro v. Brann, 197 AD3d 787, 788 [2d Dep't 2021]; see also People v. Delosanto, 307 AD2d 298, 299 [2d Dep't 2003] ["[T]he Supreme Court should have charged the People with a 13-day period [between] a court imposed deadline to respond to one of the defendant's pretrial motions [to] the date that the People actually filed a response."]; People v. Gonzalez, 266 AD2d 562, 563 [2d Dep't 1999] [holding that a period between which "the People were originally scheduled to respond" and "the date upon which they actually did respond" should be "charged to the People" because "it constitutes a period of [*2]unreasonable delay"]; People v. Commack, 194 AD2d 619, 620 [2d Dep't 1993] ["[T]he last 10 days . . . should be charged to the People because the People did not respond to the motion until 10 days after the court-ordered deadline."]).

Here, on November 30, 2023, a prior court set a motion schedule in open court with both the prosecution and the defense present. The court ordered the defense to file its motion by December 21, 2023, and it ordered the prosecution to respond by January 11, 2024. It adjourned the case to February 26, 2024, for decision.

The defense properly filed and served its motion on December 21, 2023, as the court ordered, but the prosecution did not meet their deadline. As a result, the case was thereafter adjourned three times in open court, with both the prosecution and the defense present, on February 26, 2024, March 26, 2024, and May 10, 2024. On May 12, 2024—four months after their due date—the prosecution finally filed their response.

The prosecution now asks this court to excuse their four-month delay in responding as a reasonable delay. They argue that the assigned prosecutor was unaware the defense had filed its motion because "no diligent conferral had been done after the filing of the COC," "the People did not receive a courtesy copy or EDDS notification," "the motion did not appear on webcriminals [sic]," and "the motion was addressed to the prior ADA not the assigned ADA."

None of these excuses can reasonably justify the prosecution's four-month failure to respond. There is no requirement that defense attorneys make "diligent conferral[s]" before filing a C.P.L. § 30.30 motion. Indeed, the discovery statute mandates that "[c]hallenges related to the sufficiency of a certificate of compliance shall be addressed by motion," (C.P.L. § 245.50[4][c]), not by "diligent conferral." Prosecutors are not entitled to advance notice that a motion will be filed—the notice of a motion is fulfilled by the literal notice of motion, which the defense's motion here contained and which they properly served on the district attorney's office. Nor are prosecutors entitled to courtesy copies or EDDS notifications; paper filings are commonly accepted by their office, as evidenced by the prosecution's standard "received" stamp on the copy of the defense's motion filed in court. Nor could the prosecution ever reasonably rely on WebCrims to alert them to motions, which almost never lists any of the motions filed in criminal court.

There is no question that the district attorney's office received the defense's motion on December 21, 2023. That office—like any law office—is responsible for correctly routing the motions it receives to the individual lawyer it has currently assigned to handle a case. Similarly, institutional defenders are responsible for routing documents that the prosecution serves on their office to the individual defense attorneys they assign on a case. (People v. Osario, 39 AD3d 400, 401 [1st Dep't 2007] [finding it legally irrelevant that a certificate of readiness, properly served on the Legal Aid Society, was served on a previous Legal Aid attorney assigned to the case]). A law office's internal procedures "should not be confused with any obligation set forth in the Criminal Procedure Law." (People v. Nichols, 79 Misc 3d 1211[A], at *6 [Crim. Ct., Bronx County 2023] [correctly noting that a defense office's insistence that discovery be served on a central discovery email address is legally irrelevant where the prosecution serves its documents at a defense attorney's individual address]). A party cannot be held to its adversary's internal staffing or administrative decisions; if they were, then a party could escape service simply by repeatedly reassigning cases to different lawyers on its staff. That is not how criminal court operates. Thus, "the substitution of a different assistant district attorney did not [excuse] the time period between the date" the prior court ordered the prosecution to respond, "and the date upon [*3]which [they] ultimately filed their response." (See Ferro, 197 AD3d at 88). In any event, even if these excuses could justify the prosecution's initial failure to route the defense's motion to the new lawyer they had assigned to handle this case, it could not excuse that failure after the case had been heard multiple times in open court thereafter.

The prosecution, as a law office, is responsible for the delay from January 11, 2024, to May 12, 2024. That adds 122 days to the eighty-three days that the prosecution waited to state ready for trial for the first time, totaling 205 days. Thus, the prosecution has exhausted its readiness time. (See C.P.L. § 30.30[1][b]). The case must be dismissed.

The foregoing constitutes the order and decision of the court.