Plaintiff appeals from an order of the Civil Court of the City of New York, New York County (Joan M. Kenney, J.), dated September 27, 2006, which denied his motion to vacate an order entered on default granting the motion of defendants Peter Cooper Village/Stuyvesant Town Management, Jill Blanchard and Donalda Habersham ("Stuyvesant defendants") to dismiss the action as against them.

PER CURIAM:

Order (Joan M. Kenney, J.), dated September 27, 2006, affirmed, with $10 costs.

We sustain the denial of plaintiff's motion to vacate his default. Plaintiff's 2006 defamation action against the Stuyvesant defendants, alleging that in the course of judicial proceedings, defendants produced a "resident history" report containing defamatory statements allegedly made by other tenants from 1991 to 1999, is time-barred since, assuming that the production of the report was not privileged (but see Toker v Pollack, 44 NY2d 211 [1978]), a one-year Statute of Limitations would apply to the defamation claim (see CPLR 215[3]; American Federal Group, Ltd. v Edelman, 282 AD2d 279 [2001]). The purported "republication" of the report in 2003, pursuant to a subpoena issued in a related Supreme Court action, was subject to an absolute privilege (see Sexter & Warmflash, P.C. v Margrabe, AD3d , 2007 NY Slip Op 65 [2007]). Moreover, the statements complained of did not constitute [*2]slander per se (see Liberman v Gelstein, 80 NY2d 429 [1992]) and were not actionable without a showing of special damages, which plaintiff did not adequately allege (see Falk v Anesthesia Assoc. Of Jamaica, 228 AD2d 326 [1996], lv dismissed 89 NY2d 916 [1996]).

This constitutes the decision and order of the court.
Decision Date: March 1, 2007