Appeal from an order of the Civil Court of the City of New York, Kings County (Peter Paul Sweeney, J.), entered February 7, 2006. The order denied defendant Testa Electric Company, Inc.'s motion seeking to vacate a prior order, dated September 12, 2005, to the extent that it precluded said defendant from testifying at trial, and for additional discovery.

Order modified by striking so much of the order as denied the branch of the motion for additional discovery seeking records to obtain authorizations for physicians and insurance companies and substituting therefor a provision granting that branch of the motion to the extent that plaintiffs are directed to provide authorizations for their respective physicians and insurance companies relating to all prior and subsequent automobile accidents and injuries sustained therein; as so modified, affirmed without costs.

The plaintiffs instituted this action to recover for personal injuries sustained in an automobile accident on April 5, 1996. Under the circumstances presented, the court below improvidently exercised its discretion in denying that branch of the motion by defendant Testa Electric Company, Inc. (Testa) to conduct additional discovery, since Testa established unusual and unanticipated circumstances or conditions that arose after the note of issue had been filed and the matter restored to the trial calendar (see 22 NYCRR 208.17 [d]; Audiovox Corp. v Benyamini, 265 AD2d 135 [2000]). Consequently, Bienvenido Rosado is directed to provide authorizations for St. Luke's Hospital and Country-Wide Insurance Company in connection with [*2]the prior accident of November 14, 1991 and the subsequent accident of March 29, 2004. Luz Cuavas is directed to provide authorizations for "Doctor 2 Medical" and Covenant Insurance Company relating to an accident which occurred on December 13, 1998. Inasmuch as Testa has not demonstrated the requisite need for the materials contained in plaintiffs'
prior counsels' files relating to said prior and subsequent accidents, and has not shown that it was unable to obtain their substantial equivalent without undue hardship (see CPLR 3101 [d] [2]), these materials need not be disclosed.

Testa's argument that the stipulation precluding it from testifying at trial should be vacated on the grounds of unilateral or mutual mistake is without merit. By order dated April 20, 2005, Testa was directed to appear for a deposition on or before August 1, 2005 or be precluded from testifying. The order further provided:
"All dates contained herein relating to completion of items in this order must be adhered to. Counsel may not enter into any adjournments without further order of this court" (emphasis in original).
Despite the court's clear directive and without prior court approval, Testa's vice- president appeared for a deposition on August 2, 2005 — one day after the court-imposed deadline. The deposition was completed that day and in September 2005, in response to a prior motion by plaintiffs to restore the matter to the trial calendar, the parties entered into a so-ordered stipulation which, among other things, precluded Testa from testifying at trial. Testa now claims, for the first time, that the stipulation was the product of unilateral mistake.
It is well settled that stipulations of settlement "are favored by the courts and not lightly cast aside" (Hallock v State of New York, 64 NY2d 224, 230 [1984] [citations omitted]). "Only where there is cause sufficient to invalidate a contract, such as fraud, collusion, mistake or accident, will a party be relieved from the consequence of a stipulation made during litigation" (id.).

Here, no good cause exists to vacate the so-ordered stipulation. Testa was represented by counsel at the time the stipulation was entered into and submitted no affirmation from its attorney indicating that the stipulation was the product of unilateral mistake. Instead, Testa merely speculates that either its attorney did not know the deposition had been held or that both defendant's and plaintiffs' attorneys were unaware of the deposition. Such speculation is insufficient to invalidate the so-ordered stipulation.

In any event, the stipulation precluding Testa from testifying at trial was not erroneous on its face, since the April 20, 2005 order unambiguously directed Testa to appear for a deposition on or before August 1, 2005 or face preclusion, and no extensions of this date would be permitted without prior court approval. Having failed to obtain prior court approval, the parties were never authorized to [*3]
adjourn the August 1 deadline. Thus, Testa cannot rely on the August 2 deposition as a basis of showing unilateral mistake.

Pesce, P.J., Weston Patterson and Rios, JJ., concur.
Decision Date: April 26, 2007