Plaintiff appeals and defendant cross-appeals from

an order of the Civil Court, New York County (Geoffrey D. Wright, J.), dated February 9, 2005, which granted defendant's motion to vacate a default judgment to the extent of reducing the principal amount of the judgment from $6,661.41 to $1,332.28.
PER CURIAM:

Order (Geoffrey D. Wright, J.), dated February 9, 2005, modified to deny defendant's motion in its entirety; as modified, order affirmed, without costs.

No legal basis was shown by defendant or identified by the motion court for reducing the amount of the November 4, 2004 default judgment issued against defendant. The court should not have considered, sua sponte, the Statute of Limitation as a bar to the enforcement of that portion of the parties' March 27, 1997 settlement stipulation relating to payment installments due six years prior to November 2004 (see CPLR 213[2]) since that defense was never pleaded by defendant or otherwise properly raised (see Paladino v Time Warner Cable of N.Y. City, 16 AD3d 646 [2005]; Mendez v Steen Trucking, 254 AD2d 715 [1998]). In any event, there is no time limit for entry of a default judgment for failure to comply with a stipulation of settlement (see Marine Midland Bank v Worldwide Indus. Corp., 307 AD2d 221 [2003]), absent appropriate language to the contrary incorporated into the parties' settlement agreement.

We have considered the arguments raised by defendant on his cross appeal and find them lacking in merit.

This constitutes the decision and order of the court.
I concur I concur
Decision Date: April 21, 2006