Our well-reasoned precedent demands that we reject defendant's belated challenge to the voluntariness of his plea on preservation grounds. The majority instead contorts the facts and our precedent beyond recognition, reaching the merits of defendant's claim under a capacious new preservation exception lacking a cogent standard or viable limiting principle. In doing so, the majority ignores that we have already expressly rejected the flawed premise on which this novel exception now rests. I dissent.

Defendant pleaded guilty to three counts of burglary in the second degree stemming from separate burglaries of different dwellings. Each count bore a maximum prison sentence of 15 years, seemingly yielding at first glance a 45-year aggregate maximum sentence. Under Penal Law § 70.30 (1) (e) (i), however, defendant's aggregate [*7]maximum sentence was capped at 20 years if convicted on all counts. His minimum sentence on each count was 3½ years. As part of his plea bargain, defendant received a conditional sentence promise of between six and eight years' imprisonment, with the possibility of receiving 3½ years—the minimum incarcerative sentence—if he satisfied certain conditions between his plea and sentencing.

At the start of the plea hearing, the People inaccurately stated that defendant faced "a maximum sentence of 45 years['] incarceration." Defendant's attorney, who was present and participated throughout the proceeding, did not correct on the record this significant overstatement of defendant's sentencing exposure. The court then addressed defendant directly and said, "the judge is supposed to tell you what the wors[t] case scenario could be, which of course could be 15 plus 15 plus 15, that's where they get the 45." Defense counsel did not take this second opportunity to point out on the record that defendant's maximum prison sentence was 20 years, not 45. At the ensuing plea allocution, the court asked defendant if he understood that he "could on each count receive a maximum prison sentence [of] up to 15 years determinate sentence," and defendant replied in the affirmative. Once again, defense counsel did not take this opportunity to note that defendant's aggregate prison term could not exceed 20 years.

Defendant's sentencing took place around 5½ months later. At no point in between did defense counsel act to correct the court's repeated misstatements of the maximum possible sentence. Nor did defendant move to withdraw his plea or vacate his conviction.

At the sentencing hearing, before imposing sentence, the court engaged in an extended discussion with defendant and his attorney regarding whether defendant violated a condition of his plea. During that discussion, the court told defendant, "I thought I gave you, I told you that on each of these [counts] you could get up to 15 years. My math isn't that great but that totals 45." Shortly thereafter, the court said, "I have great latitude, I can go up to a maximum 15 years on each [count]"—but the court added that it was "[n]ot saying I'll do that." These comments marked defense counsel's fourth and fifth discrete opportunities, respectively, over nearly half a year, to correct an on-the-record misstatement of defendant's sentencing exposure. Defense counsel did not do so.

The court determined that it was not bound by the sentence promise because defendant violated a condition of his plea. The court then sentenced defendant to an aggregate term of 15 years' imprisonment. Immediately after the sentence was pronounced, defense counsel asked to reopen the sentencing hearing so that defendant could call a witness. The court denied the request. At no point during this exchange did counsel point out any of the court's repeated errors in stating the maximum amount of time that defendant could potentially spend in prison if convicted at trial.

On appeal, defendant claimed for the first time that the court's overstatements of his sentencing exposure rendered his plea involuntary. The Appellate Division rejected that belated contention because defendant failed to preserve it (224 AD3d 1238, 1239 [4th Dept 2024]).^[FN11] The Court then declined to reach the unpreserved claim in the [*8]interest of justice (see id.). But the Court deemed defendant's sentence unduly harsh and severe and reduced his prison term from 15 years to 10½ (see id. at 1240).

With only narrow exceptions, we have unequivocally required a defendant to preserve a challenge to the voluntariness of their plea by making "a motion to withdraw the plea under CPL 220.60 (3) or a motion to vacate the judgment of conviction under CPL 440.10" (People v Lopez, 71 NY2d 662, 665 [1988]).^[FN12] One exception applies "where the defendant's recitation of the facts underlying the crime pleaded to clearly casts significant doubt upon the defendant's guilt or otherwise calls into question the voluntariness of the plea" (id. at 666). This is because "the court's attention should have been instantly drawn to the problem, and the salutary purpose of the preservation rule is arguably not jeopardized" (id.). Defendant's factual recitation at his plea allocution is not at issue here, and there is no dispute that this exception does not apply.

The other exception applies only where the record reveals that preservation was "actual[ly] or practical[ly] unavailab[le]" to the defendant (People v Williams, 27 NY3d 212, 221 [2016]; see People v Louree, 8 NY3d 541, 546 [2007]). This occurs, for example, where the court first informs the defendant of a component of their sentence "during the course of sentencing" (Louree, 8 NY3d at 546).^[FN13] As we have explained, requiring preservation in such circumstances would be a catch-22. A defendant can move to withdraw their plea only before their sentence is imposed, and they cannot thereafter move to vacate their conviction based on an error that is clear from the face of the record (see id.). As such, a defendant may be unable to preserve an objection to a component of their sentence that they first learned of during or immediately before the sentence's imposition (see id.). We therefore do not require preservation in that narrow instance (see id.).

But a defendant must preserve their claim if they have a legitimate opportunity to do so. Indeed, in applying this exception, we have repeatedly stressed its "significant constraints": it obtains only "where a defendant has no practical ability to object to an error in a plea allocution which is clear from the face of the record" (People v Peque, 22 NY3d 168, 182 [2013 plurality] [emphasis added]; see e.g. People v Crowder, 24 NY3d 1134, 1136-1137 [2015] [preservation required where "(n)either defendant nor defense counsel expressed any objection" despite having "had three opportunities" to preserve a plea-voluntariness challenge prior to sentencing]; People v Conceicao, 26 NY3d 375, 381 [2015] ["If a defendant has an opportunity to seek relief from the sentencing court, he must preserve his challenge to the plea"]; see also People v Delorbe, 35 NY3d 112, 119-120 [2020] ["we have reinforced th(is) carefully circumscribed limit( ) on exceptions to the preservation requirement in the plea context"]).

The majority now abandons this long-settled limitation without meaningful explanation. Its new standard, fashioned from whole cloth, is untenably broad and unworkably unclear. The majority states that where "the court provides the defendant with erroneous information concerning their maximum sentencing exposure that is contrary to the undisputed text of the Penal Law, fails to correct its error on the record, and the defendant has no apparent reason to question the accuracy of that information, the defendant need not preserve a challenge to the voluntariness of the[ir] guilty plea on that ground" (majority op at 5-6). Does this include any erroneous statement by the court concerning the defendant's maximum possible sentence, no matter how small? If the court corrects its misstatement off the record, or defense counsel tells their client off the record what their maximum sentencing exposure actually is, can the defendant now reverse their plea on appeal as though those events never happened?

Furthermore, when exactly would a defendant have "apparent reason to question the accuracy" of the court's "information" (id. at 5)? Even assuming that the defendant themselves may have such a reason, must they now stand up during their proceedings and "question" the court's remark—despite the presence of their attorney—in order to preserve their claim for appellate review? Or does the majority mean for the exception not to apply where defense counsel had such an "apparent reason"? If the latter, how does that square with the majority's insistence that the exception turns on whether the defendant themselves, not their attorney, had the requisite actual or practical opportunity to preserve their claim (see majority op at 5-6, 8-9 & n 5)?

Insofar as the majority's standard turns on whether the defendant themselves had "apparent reason to question" whether the trial court was committing error (id. at 5), this marks a significant departure from our precedent that the majority fails adequately to explain. We have squarely and expressly required preservation when defense counsel had an opportunity to preserve their client's claim (compare id. at 5-6, 8-9 & n 5, with e.g. Williams, 27 NY3d at 223 [holding that "(b)y failing to seize upon these opportunities to object or seek additional pertinent information, defense counsel failed to preserve defendant's claim for appellate review" (collecting cases) (emphasis added)]; Crowder, 24 NY3d at 1136-1137 ["Neither defendant nor defense counsel expressed any objection" despite having "had three opportunities" to do so (emphasis added)]). The majority explicitly recognizes that we have done so; the majority even acknowledges "that defense counsel is tasked with preserving claims of error, even if that error involves the voluntariness of a defendant's actions" (majority op at 10 n 7 [emphasis added]; see also id. at 11 [reasoning that "a judge's expression of uncertainty" regarding a defendant's sentencing exposure "would cue a defense attorney to investigate further and discover any errors" (emphasis added)]). This makes eminent sense. Our criminal justice system guarantees all defendants the right to meaningful legal representation precisely because they are not fairly expected to know the technicalities of the law. Yet the majority's preservation exception elides this dispositive distinction out of existence.

And what does the majority mean by referencing the Penal Law's "undisputed text" (id. at 5)? In that regard, the majority appears to retain our preservation requirement where the error below relates to an "open legal question[ ] about ambiguous statutory language" (see majority op at 5-6, 10). Yet the majority fails to define that cryptic label. Sentencing statutes can indeed be ambiguous, and defendants do dispute their meaning. The majority gives no reason why our preservation requirement should rest on an appellate court's determination of whether a statute is "ambiguous" (id. at 10) or "[ ]disputed" (id. at 5). The majority fails to identify any prior case in which the requirement has been applied in such a way.

Nor does the majority acknowledge the qualitative difference between the trial court's misstatements here and the select list of errors that trigger the preservation exception under our precedent. We have excused preservation in this context only in certain limited instances where the trial court failed to inform the defendant of a component of their sentence or a consequence of their plea (see generally Louree, 8 NY3d 541 [postrelease supervision]; Conceicao, 26 NY3d 375 [waiver of right to jury trial, right to confront one's accusers, and privilege against self-incrimination]; Peque, 22 NY3d 168 [deportation]; cf. id. at 196 [plurality op] ["the Court's decision in the instant appeals arises from the truly unique nature of deportation as a consequence of a guilty plea; there is nothing else quite like it"]). The error here implicates neither. In stark contrast, the trial court misstated defendant's theoretical maximum sentence if convicted at trial. Unlike in every other case where the exception has been applied, that error did not render defendant ignorant of, and thus unable to object to, a consequence of pleading guilty or a component of the punishment imposed by the court. A defendant's misapprehension of their sentencing exposure is not even always reversible error: a plea may be voluntary despite that the defendant "was misinformed about the maximum sentence to which he was exposed" (People v Garcia, 92 NY2d 869, 870 [1998]). We have never before applied the exception where the defendant claims that the trial court committed an error of this type.

Taking the majority's rule at face value, I fear its holding will deluge the appellate courts. The majority waves away this concern by insisting that misstatements of a defendant's maximum possible sentence are "assuredly rare," because "[w]e presume that courts are aware of the law" (majority op at 10). I do not presume otherwise. Nonetheless, as criminal practitioners well know, despite the very best efforts of counsel and our trial-court colleagues, misstatements of a defendant's sentencing exposure are not uncommon. This is often understandable, because while the court's miscalculation here was relatively straightforward, the same cannot often be said in a more [*9]complex case, such as one involving dozens of counts, each of which may run consecutively or concurrently to the others, potentially depending on the proof at trial, or one involving sentencing predicates and enhancements, which may turn on information unavailable when plea discussions occur. Against this backdrop, the majority cannot reconcile its new standard with the delimited exception that we have time and again taken pains to describe as "narrow" and "rare" (see e.g. Louree, 8 NY3d at 545, quoting Lopez, 71 NY2d at 666 [stressing that the exception applies only in "the 'rare case' "]; Peque, 22 NY3d at 183 [plurality] [recognizing our "narrow exception to the preservation doctrine"]; Williams, 27 NY3d at 214 [recognizing "the existence of a narrow exception to the preservation requirement in rare cases where the defendant lacks a reasonable opportunity to object to (certain) fundamental defect(s) in the plea"]).

The majority thus fails to grapple with or justify the strain on judicial resources that its broad holding will predictably entail. Instead, the majority paradoxically insists that requiring preservation here "would only increase litigation in appellate courts, not reduce it" (majority op at 12). That head-scratching view of the preservation doctrine inexplicably ignores the doctrine's animating purpose—to "preserve[ ] limited judicial resources" by "allow[ing] the trial court an opportunity to correct any error in the proceedings below at a time when the issue can be dealt with most effectively" (Delorbe, 35 NY3d at 119 [internal quotation marks omitted]); accord People v Michael, 48 NY2d 1, 6 [1979]; see also People v Jackson, 29 NY3d 18, 22 [2017, Rivera, J.] ["The salutary goal of th[e] well-established preservation requirement is to avoid the need for an appeal"; it is "grounded in large part in the need to preserve limited judicial resources and avoid untoward delay in the resolution of criminal proceedings" (internal quotation marks omitted)]).

Moreover, pleas benefit both parties and generally mark an end to the litigation, including to the People's efforts to construct a case against the defendant (see e.g. People v Seaberg, 74 NY2d 1, 7 [1989] [plea bargaining "provides a means where, by mutual concessions, the parties may obtain a prompt resolution of criminal proceedings with all the benefits that enure from final disposition"]; People v Konieczny, 2 NY3d 569, 572 [2004] ["A plea of guilty, as we have repeatedly observed, generally marks the end of a criminal case, not a gateway to further litigation."]). To reopen defendant's prosecution years after it began, due to an error that defendant could have timely brought to the trial court's attention, undermines these weighty interests, including "the very real interest of the State in achieving finality in a criminal prosecution" (Delorbe, 35 NY3d at 119).

"As time passes, evidence is misplaced, witnesses disappear and once vivid memories of a crime begin to fade into uncertainty" (People v Jackson, 78 NY2d 638, 646 [1991]). The majority's holding therefore disincentivizes defendants from correcting the trial court's misstatement of their maximum possible sentence prior to accepting their plea, or from moving to withdraw their plea on this basis. After all, if such a defendant pleads guilty and does not then receive their promised sentence—as happened here—they may now freely seek to unwind their plea on appeal, thereby avoiding the consequences of violating their plea agreement. The majority thus "encourage[s] gamesmanship and waste[s] judicial resources in order to protect a defendant against a claimed error[,] protection against which requires no more than a specific objection on [their] part" (People v Dekle, 56 NY2d 835, 837 [1982]). For this reason, I fear that trial judges may now simply avoid stating the defendant's maximum sentencing exposure before taking their plea, for fear that any inadvertent error—however slight, and even if not pointed out by any party—may result in the defendant's plea being unwound. This undesirable outcome is fundamentally at odds with the majority's focus on the trial courts' vital duty "to ascertain whether the defendant is pleading guilty voluntarily" (majority op at 7).^[FN14]

In this regard, the record makes plain that the court never indicated that it might impose the maximum sentence in this case. On the contrary, after mistakenly stating at sentencing that it could in theory "go up to a maximum [of] 15 years on each [count]," the court immediately added that it was "[n]ot saying I'll do that." The court instead acceded to the People's request that defendant be sentenced to the minimum sentence if certain conditions were satisfied prior to sentencing. The majority's insistence that the court somehow gave defendant a choice between pleading guilty or "go[ing] to trial and if found guilty spend[ing] close to half a century in prison" (majority op at 16) rests upon a grave misunderstanding of the record.

The majority commits yet another error by writing off the principal remedy that remains at defendant's disposal: a motion to vacate his conviction on grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel (see CPL 440.10). "Where a defendant's complaint about counsel is predicated on factors such as counsel's strategy, advice or preparation that do not appear on the face of the record, the defendant must raise [their] claim" by making such a motion (Peque, 22 NY3d at 202 [plurality]). If defendant had done so here, the parties could then have developed additional facts bearing directly on the voluntariness of the plea—including any facts revealing whether defense counsel told defendant off the record that his maximum prison sentence was 20 years (see e.g. People v Maracle, 19 NY3d 925, 929 [2012] ["To the extent that defendant seeks to . . . challenge the voluntariness of her plea (based) on matters outside the record, she may do so by affidavit in support of a CPL 440.10 motion" (internal quotation marks omitted)]). Such a motion is defendant's proper recourse. No legal authority supports the majority's suggestion that we should excuse preservation on the ground that if defendant were to file such a motion, its success would not be guaranteed (see majority op at 9-10 n 6).

On this point, the majority asserts that excusing preservation "is appropriate" because "defendant's challenge is based not on counsel's failures, but instead on the court's failures" to meet "its constitutional obligation" to ensure that defendant's plea was voluntary (id. at 7-8, 14). In other words, the majority reasons that preservation should be excused because defendant claims that the trial court committed constitutional error. This is legally baseless. With only "tightly circumscribed" exceptions, a defendant must "preserve[ ] in the trial court" "most errors of constitutional dimension" (see People v Hanley, 20 NY3d 601, 604-605 [2013] [internal quotation marks omitted] [collecting cases]).^[FN15] That defendant's claim concerns "well-established due process requirements" (majority op at 8) thus says nothing about whether the claim must be preserved. Instead, as the majority acknowledges, we have long held that "[o]rdinarily, a defendant must preserve a challenge to the voluntariness of their plea" (id. at 4, citing Lopez, 71 NY2d at 665-666). This case should be no different.

Finally, and equally troubling, contrary to the majority's contention, our holding in People v Williams (27 NY3d 212 [2016]) directly forecloses the majority's new preservation rule. There, the defendant argued that preservation was actually or practically unavailable to him because "the court never announced that the promised sentence was illegal and his lawyer did not display any recognition of the unlawfulness of the proposed sentence on the record" (id. at 222). The Williams Court emphatically rejected that assertion (see id. at 222-224 & n 2). As the Court explained, "we have never held, either in the plea context or elsewhere, that the defendant's lack of actual knowledge that an error has occurred, despite an opportunity to learn of the error, may excuse the defendant from having to preserve his or her claim" (id. at 223 n 2). "[S]uch a theory would swallow the preservation doctrine whole," we explained, "thereby eviscerating an essential limit on our jurisdiction, because virtually every defendant could rely on a record silent on the subject of the defendant's actual knowledge to argue that [they] did not in fact comprehend the erroneous nature of the court's actions and therefore had no obligation to object" (id. [internal citation omitted]). We therefore declined to transform the narrow exception at issue into a "sweeping knowledge-based exception to the preservation rule" (id.).

To be sure, two Judges dissented in Williams, arguing—as today's majority now holds—that because "the prosecutor, defense counsel and the court all suffered from the same misunderstanding about the plea offer, it would be unreasonable to conclude that defendant understood it" (id. at 232-233 [Rivera, J., dissenting] [internal quotation marks omitted]; see majority op at 6 [reasoning that because "the court, the prosecutor, and defense counsel all mistakenly believed that defendant faced an aggregate prison term of 45 years," defendant "could not be expected to question that misinformation"]). The Williams Court expressly disagreed and held exactly the opposite (compare 27 NY3d at 232-233 [Rivera, J., dissenting], with id. at 223 & n 2 [majority opinion]). Even assuming that some of our prior cases could arguably be read as suggesting otherwise (see majority op at 9 n 5 [describing Louree and Diaz in this way]), Williams unquestionably abrogated those cases in this respect (see 27 NY3d at 223 & n 2). Until today, that holding, drawn from decades of consistent precedent, remained good law.^[FN16]

Unable to distinguish Williams on the law, the majority instead attempts to do so on the facts (see majority op at 6-7 & n 3). But on that score, too, the majority's analysis is fatally flawed. One cannot seriously contest that the defendant in Williams and defendant here had substantively identical opportunities to preserve their challenges to their pleas. In Williams, defendant's "multiple opportunities to preserve" included, "inter alia," "the court's [erroneous] statements at the plea proceeding," "the court's comments at sentencing, which offered an opening for counsel to confirm the legality of the court's sentencing options and its effect on the validity of the plea," and "the numerous adjournments . . . between the plea and sentencing proceedings, which could have allowed counsel and defendant to inquire further" (27 NY3d at 222-223). The majority fails to explain how any of these "multiple opportunities" meaningfully differs from the very same opportunities that defendant had here (id. at 222). Indeed, just as in this case, the trial court erred in Williams by "[r]elying largely on the People's apparent [erroneous] belief" respecting the defendant's permissible sentence (id. at 215), leading to an issue of which "the court was not informed . . . and never indicated that it learned of . . . on its own" (id. at 217). In all the ways that matter, Williams and this case are the same.

Undaunted, the majority endeavors to distinguish Williams by noting that the defendant there also had additional preservation opportunities that defendant here lacked (see majority op at 6-7 & n 3). But Williams did not hold that preservation is excused unless a defendant had all of the numerous preservation opportunities that the defendant in that case had at his disposal. Just the opposite: the Court explained that preservation is required where the defendant had "a practical opportunity" to object (Williams, 27 NY3d at 223 n 2 [emphasis added]). The Court merely observed that because the defendant in Williams had "multiple" such opportunities, he was miles away from satisfying this standard (id. at 222). The majority's forced reading of Williams thus is plainly wrong. And even if the majority's mischaracterization of Williams were correct, the majority fails to acknowledge that defendant plainly had "multiple opportunities to preserve" his claim, regardless of whether those opportunities were fewer in number than in Williams (id. at 222). This reality is only further demonstrated by the fact that defendants in other cases have preserved the same claim that defendant now presses—belying the majority's premise that a defendant misinformed of their maximum sentencing exposure cannot "actual[ly] or practical[ly]" object before the trial court to that error (id. at 221; see e.g. People v Johnson, 160 AD3d 516, 517-519 [1st Dept 2018] [reversing denial of defendant's motion to withdraw their plea due to the trial court's overstatement of the maximum possible sentence]; People v Iorio, 188 AD3d 1352, 1352-1353 [3d Dept 2020] [affirming denial of defendant's motion to vacate his plea on the ground that it was coerced by "the erroneous information he received regarding his maximum sentencing exposure"]; People v Wright, 196 AD2d 700, 701 [1st Dept 1993] [affirming denial of defendant's motion to vacate their plea where "(i)t does not appear that the voluntariness of defendant's plea was materially affected by the court's erroneous statement concerning the maximum legal sentence"]).

The majority's final attempt to distinguish Williams—by asserting that the court's misstatements of defendant's maximum possible sentence here supposedly "conveyed absolute complete assurance" that he faced up to [*10]45 years' imprisonment—is equally untenable (majority op at 6-7). We have never before held that preservation is excused unless the trial court voices doubt on the record as to whether it is making a mistake. That would make no sense: nearly every appellant argues that the trial court committed reversible error unwittingly. On the contrary, we have long required preservation regardless of whether "the [court's] error escaped discovery of . . . the judge, prosecutor and defense counsel" (Williams, 27 NY3d at 223 n 2, quoting id. at 231 [Rivera, J., dissenting]). It is therefore unsurprising that the majority offers no legal support for this radical proposition (see majority op at 6-7 & n 3), which effectively negates our preservation doctrine for the reasons that Williams compellingly described (see 27 NY3d at 223 n 2). The majority purports to disavow this view without explaining how its holding can be read as meaning anything different (compare majority op at 7 n 3, with id. at 11 [reasoning that "judges are [ ]capable of identifying and explaining the[ir] uncertainties" regarding a defendant's sentencing exposure]).

Though the majority may "disagree with our holding" in Williams, we "nonetheless [are] bound to follow it under the doctrine of stare decisis" (Matter of State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v Fitzgerald, 25 NY3d 799, 819 [2015]; see People v Bing, 76 NY2d 331, 338 [1990] [stare decisis "rests upon the principle that a court is an institution, not merely a collection of individuals, and that governing rules of law do not change merely because the personnel of the court changes"]). That doctrine instructs that we "may overrule a prior decision" only "in the rarest of cases," when "an extraordinary combination of factors undermines" our precedent's "reasoning and practical viability" (Matter of Brooke S.B. v Elizabeth A.C.C., 28 NY3d 1, 23 [2016]). If the majority wishes to overrule Williams for the reasons stated in that case's dissent, it should do so by engaging directly with this bedrock principle of our jurisprudence. Perhaps because it cannot do so persuasively, the majority instead nullifies our caselaw by paying it lip service while " 'distinguish[ing]' " it "to the point that it unravels" (People v Brown, 41 NY3d 279, 301 [2023, Cannataro, J., dissenting]). I cannot endorse that approach.

"Preservation—or, more precisely, the lack of preservation—frequently accounts for the disposition of criminal cases in this Court, and we enforce the preservation doctrine with equal regularity in the trial and plea contexts, remaining mindful that the necessity of preservation is the rule rather than the exception" (Williams, 27 NY3d at 219 [internal quotation marks and citation omitted]). It is no mere formality: ordinarily, "this Court best serves the litigants and the law by limiting its review to issues that have first been presented to and carefully considered by the trial and intermediate appellate courts" (Sabine v State of New York, — NY3d &mdash, &mdash, 2024 NY Slip Op 06288, *1 [2024]). As relates to plea-voluntariness claims, the majority blasts a gaping hole in this doctrine by creating an exception so large as to swallow the rule, countermanding our repeated warnings against that very result. Because defense counsel plainly had the requisite practical opportunity to raise before the trial court the claim that defendant presses for the first time on appeal, I would adhere to our precedent and affirm the Appellate Division's unanimous order.

Order reversed and case remitted to Supreme Court, Erie County, for further proceedings in accordance with the opinion herein. Opinion by Judge Rivera. Chief Judge Wilson and Judges Cannataro, Troutman and Halligan concur. Judge Singas dissents and votes to affirm in an opinion, in which Judge Garcia concurs.

Decided March 18, 2025